By Karien Jonckheere<\/p>\n
DURBAN, South Africa, April 24. THREE swimmers used the final evening of the Telkom South African National Championships to collect their fourth titles of the competition in Durban on Sunday. And after the evening\u2019s proceedings, Gerhard Zandberg, Melissa Corfe and Suzaan van Biljon were named as the swimmers of the competition.<\/p>\n
Zandberg, who already had the 50 backstroke and 50 and 100m freestyle golds, added the 100 backstroke to his collection, winning in a time of 56.68, from Garth Tune (57.94) and Chris King (57.99).<\/p>\n
"My body is sore," he said afterward. "It\u2019s been a tough season already but I\u2019m enjoying it \u2013 it\u2019s great. I\u2019m just going to take a three-day break and then it\u2019s straight back in again. I want to try and race as much as possible internationally.<\/p>\n
Corfe bagged the women\u2019s 100 backstroke title, adding it to the 200 backstroke and 200 and 400 freestyle golds. She staved off a challenge from up and coming Pretoria swimmer Karin Prinsloo, winning in a time of 1:04.49. Prinsloo was second in 1:04.91. Van Biljon, meanwhile won the 50 breaststroke to complete her clean sweep of the breaststroke events (having also won the 200 individual medley on Saturday).<\/p>\n
"I\u2019m even more tired now," gasped the World Short Course silver medallist after winning the race in 32.77. "I just swam to win tonight and wasn\u2019t too worried about the time."<\/p>\n
Bianca Meyer provided Jessica Pengelly with a tough challenge in the 400 individual medley but it was Pengelly who emerged victorious, winning in a time of 4:52.52. Meyer was second in 4:53.32 and 800 and 1,500 freestyle national champion Wendy Trott was third in 4:55.41.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the country\u2019s veteran swimmers showed they still have what it takes to beat their rising rivals. Mandy Loots claimed victory in the 50 butterfly in 27.89 while Olympic silver medalist Terence Parkin (who missed out on the chance to bag his 10th 200m breaststroke title here because of emergency dental treatment) claimed the 400 individual medley gold in 4:28.80. Jay-Cee Thomson, 15, was second in 4;29.47 with 16-year-old Riaan Schoeman third in 4:30.01.<\/p>\n
"That\u2019s exactly the time we were going for," explained Parkin\u2019s coach Wayne Ridden. "He\u2019s not fit enough to go faster than that because he\u2019s busy with other things at the moment but we knew that time would win it."<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, just relieved to have her 100 freestyle title back was Lauren Roets who had a disastrous race at last year\u2019s nationals when a botched start saw her swimming into the false start rope, cutting her mouth and then having to swim the race a few minutes later.<\/p>\n
"At least I managed to get my title back after the disaster last year," said a relieved Roets afterward. "I wasn\u2019t too worried about the time. All I wanted to do was win. It\u2019s been a long two months of competition so I\u2019m looking forward to a bit of a break. But there\u2019s not too much time so it\u2019ll just be about a week or two."<\/p>\n
Another swimmer who will need a bit of a break is Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Troyden Prinsloo. He blitzed his way to victory in the 1,500 freestyle (his third gold of the meet), finishing over 50 meters in front of the rest of the field in a time of 15:12.12. Finishing in sixth place in that race was 15-year-old Chad Ho who swam a personal best time of 16:04.13, having already taken the open water 5k title at Hazelmere Dam in another personal best time of 59:00 earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
Western Province\u2019s Yolandi van der Merwe took the women\u2019s 5k title in 1:02.07. In the other finals of the evening session, Fouche Venter took the 50 butterfly title in 25.34 and Louis Lotter the 50 breaststroke gold in 28.72.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Karien Jonckheere DURBAN, South Africa, April 24. THREE swimmers used the final evening of the Telkom South African National Championships to collect their fourth titles of the competition in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n