Faltering Lara gets second chance from Tatjana and she makes it count

Lara van Niekerk came back from the dead on Saturday to book a spot in the women’s 50m breaststroke final at the world championships in Fukuoka, but only after a helping hand by compatriot Tatjana Schoenmaker.

Double Commonwealth Games champion Van Niekerk, the bronze medallist in the one-lap race at last year’s world championships, won her semifinal last night in 29.91sec, which seeded her third for Sunday’s final (1.09pm SA time).

But she would have been packing her bags had Schoenmaker, the newly crowned world 200m breaststroke champion and 100m silver medallist, not given her a reprieve by withdrawing from the semifinals.

The explosive Van Niekerk, who owns the 17 fastest 50m breaststroke swims by a South African, ranging from 29.72 to 30.21, was eliminated in the morning heats after a poor start.

Her 30.76 effort missed a semifinal berth by one spot, just one-hundredth of a second behind the slowest qualifier.

But Schoenmaker, who had advanced with a 30.70 in the same heat ahead of Van Niekerk, pulled out, promoting Van Niekerk into the top 16. The Olympic 200m champion does the 50m for fun — Schoenmaker set her 30.21 lifetime best on the first lap of the 100m race at the Tokyo Games.

And Van Niekerk, who failed to progress from the 100m breaststroke heats earlier in the week, made no mistake in the evening, keeping alive South African hopes of a third medal in Japan.

“I am so grateful to have had the chance to swim the semis, and wanted to just race to the best of my ability,” said Van Niekerk. “I am really looking forward to the final now.”

Defending champion Ruta Meilutyte of Lithuania won the second 50m breaststroke semifinal, equalling Italian Benedetta Pilato’s 29.30 world record with American Lilly King second in 29.72. Pilato, runner-up last year, was the fourth fastest overall in 30.09.

In other South African action on the day, Clayton Jimmie, Aimee Canny, Roland Schoeman and Rebecca Meder combined to set an African record in the mixed 4x100m freestyle relay, clocking 3min 30.16sec to finish eighth in their heat.

The slowest qualifying time for the eight-lane final was 3:26.78.

Emma Chelius, a semifinalist at Tokyo 2020 and last year’s world championships, ended eighth in her 50m freestyle heat, touching in 25.34.

Jimmie finished seventh in his 50m backstroke preliminary in 25.97 and Righardt Muller clocked 15:33.82 as he finished fourth in his freestyle race over 1,500m, where the eight qualifiers for the final all dipped under 15 minutes. 

Apart from Van Niekerk, the only other South African scheduled to compete on the final day on Sunday is Meder in the women’s 400m individual medley.

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