Wayde van Niekerk played a starring role in one of the greatest nights in track and field history, but there was no reprieve for him when he faced the media afterwards.
In Rio de Janeiro on August 14, 2016, 400m world champion Van Niekerk entrenched himself as the best one-lapper on the planet as he stormed to victory in a 43.03 sec world record, smashing the 43.18 mark set by iconic American Michael Johnson in 1999.
And then, several minutes later, Usain Bolt became the first sprinter in history — man or woman — to claim a hat-trick of Olympic crowns as he retained the 100m title he won at Beijing 2008 and defended successfully at London 2012.
The Jamaican clocked 9.81 sec to see off Justin Gatlin (9.89) and Andre De Grasse (9.91). Van Niekerk’s countryman Akani Simbine, who had lowered the SA record to 9.89 the previous month, was fifth in 9.94.
The night belonged to Van Niekerk and South Africa as much as it did to Bolt and Jamaica. There were two kings on the track.
In the stadium Van Niekerk was celebrated by fans and fellow-athletes, including Bolt, but at the press conference his achievement was cast in a more sobering light.
One question thrown at him caught him off guard — had he been a boxer in a ring he would have been knocked to the canvas.
How could he convince sceptics that his performance had been clean?
It seemed a more apt question to have put to Gatlin, the 100m silver medallist who had spent years on the sidelines serving doping bans.
It was a cheeky question for Van Niekerk, but it also made sense, given the drug controversies. The finger wasn’t being pointed at Van Niekerk — it was aimed at his chosen sport.
Drug cheats tend to have dramatic improvements in their performances, but Van Niekerk’s trajectory had been constant. In 2013 he broke 46 seconds and the next year he dipped under 45. In 2015 he went 43.96 in Paris and a month later won the world title in Beijing in 43.48, becoming only the fourth man in history to break 43.5.
The world record was clearly loading, whether people wanted to acknowledge it or not. Not long after that I interviewed Johnson, and when I asked him if he thought Van Niekerk had the potential to break his record, he replied impatiently that he wasn’t in the business of fortunetelling.
In early 2016 Van Niekerk broke 10 seconds in the 100m to become the first man in history to have clocked a sub-10 100m, sub-20 200m and sub-44 400m. In his pre-Olympic races abroad he was comfortably running low-44s. He was clearly on track heading into Brazil.
Nobody knows what people do in their private lives, but if anyone had risen to stardom on a path without suspicion, it was Van Niekerk.
Still, that question was asked, and he had clearly never rehearsed responding to such interrogation. “I know I’m not, so what else can I say?” replied Van Niekerk.
It was harsh, but think about Ben Johnson, Marion Jones, Dwain Chambers, Linford Christie and more recently Gatlin, Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake, SA’s own Simon Magakwe and many, many more.
But it got me thinking that if it’s acceptable to question ostensibly clean athletes about drug use, then journalists should be asking similar questions of all sports administrators and politicians at large. After all, what’s good for the goose and all that.
So maybe from now on my colleagues and I need to ask all elected and employed officials: What assurance can you give that you are not corrupt? How do we know that you don’t have some conflict of interest? Do you have any links to the criminal underworld? Will you be prepared to resign if you are ever found to be anything less than perfectly honest?
Fair is only fair.
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