DURBAN, South Africa, May 23. HIS is not a name that has been heard too often outside of swimming circles, but George Du Rand\u2019s silver medal at the recent Commonwealth Games may be starting to change all that. The Bloemfontein student has achieved regular national and World Cup success but his silver in the 200-meter backstroke in Melbourne signaled his intentions to take the next step in his international career. On Wednesday, Du Rand and three other swimmers will head to Bratislava in Slovakia where they will be competing from May 26-28.<\/p>\n
"I have never been to Slovakia before so it should be interesting. I\u2019m not too sure what to expect though," said Du Rand. "I didn\u2019t take a break after Nationals and just went straight through so I\u2019m feeling in good shape and looking forward to the competition. It\u2019s always good to compete in Europe."<\/p>\n
Du Rand will be competing in the 200 backstroke and the 100 and 200 butterfly in Bratislava. And while he is hoping for a good showing in the Slovakian capital, he has bigger things in mind.<\/p>\n
"Obviously I always want to compete well and there will be some strong Eastern European competition there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut for this part of the season my main focus is on the Pan Pacific Championships in Canada in August (17-20). And that\u2019s then a step toward next year\u2019s World Championships in Melbourne."<\/p>\n
Louis Lotter, Tanya Strydom, Wilechia Vraagoom will be the other South African swimmers competing in Bratislava over the weekend. And a number of other South Africans, including the country\u2019s top open water swimmers, will be heading to Europe to compete over the coming weeks where they will swim in the Mare Nostrum series and several other events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DURBAN, South Africa, May 23. HIS is not a name that has been heard too often outside of swimming circles, but George Du Rand\u2019s silver medal at the recent Commonwealth<\/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-11374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n