Under-performing SA swimmers still set African relay record

Look at the glitter and you’ll see that SA cracked an African relay record at the world championships in Gwangju on Wednesday morning.

But examine the individual times and you’ll discover they under-performed. 

Christopher Reid‚ Tatjana Schoenmaker‚ Ryan Coetzee and Erin Gallagher smashed more than four seconds off the previous continental mark‚ also held by SA‚ as they clocked 3min 49.90sec in the mixed-gender 4x100m medley relay.

“I’m pretty sure we’re all pretty stoked about that result‚” Gallagher said afterwards. 

“It was fun with the team‚” added Coetzee. “Disappointed that we’re out.”

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Overall they ended 15th out of the 38 teams that started. 

They were more than eight seconds off the pace-setting Americans and 04.70sec behind the Germans‚ the slowest of the eight qualifiers for Wednesday’s final. 

They ended eighth out of 10 in their heat where the top five outfits had women starting off the relay in the backstroke leg. The next three all had men. 

In fact‚ of the eight finalists‚ the US were the only team to use a man up front. 

Reid kicked off for SA‚ but he was 0.61sec slower in the opening backstroke leg than he was in the individual race two days before in South Korea. 

Schoenmaker was 0.36 off her time from the 100m breaststroke final the night before and Coetzee was 1.74 off his butterfly best. 

Freestyler Erin Gallagher was 0.39sec off her fastest time. 

In total that’s 3.1sec slower than they’re capable of. 

If Chad Le Clos‚ who also skipped the 100m freestyle heats to focus on the 200m butterfly final on Wednesday night‚ took Coetzee’s place‚ they could potentially have been 4.39sec faster. 

And that still wouldn’t have been fast enough to make the final. 

It wasn’t any better in the individual races on Wednesday morning.

Dune Coetzee was 20th overall in the women’s 200m butterfly in 2:11.92‚ although the 2:10.89 she swam at the SA championships in April would also not have been enough. 

Eben Vorster was 39th overall in the men’s 200m individual medley in 2:05.69‚ well outside the 2:02.71 from the national gala that would have pushed him up five spots.​