One world championship medallist lined up for the Akani Simbine shoot-out held at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria this past weekend.
And it wasn’t Simbine but rather the largely forgotten Anaso Jobodwana who took the 200m bronze at Beijing 2015. He finished fifth in his 60m heat on Saturday.
Jobodwana was one three SA world championship debutants in Moscow in 2013, alongside Simbine and Wayde van Niekerk.
Simbine went to Russia having set the SA Under-20 100m record in late 2012, but Jobodwana was the man to watch there.
He had won the 100m-200m double at the World Student Games the month before and made the 200m final at the London Olympics the previous year.
In Russia Jobodwana advanced to the 100m semifinals and again made the 200m final, while Simbine failed to progress beyond the heats, clocking 10.38. Van Niekerk also had a disappointing outing, unable to get to the 400m semifinals.
Two years later Jobodwana finished third in the 200m behind Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin, while Simbine won the World Student Games 100m title and reached the 100m semifinals in Beijing. Van Niekerk launched himself to superstardom by winning the 400m gold in China.
In 2016 Jobodwana struggled with an injury that undoubtedly robbed him of an Olympic medal in Rio; Simbine finished fifth in the 100m final.
Since then Jobodwana has disappeared off the world athletics radar, while Simbine has remained in the top five of the world every single year, finishing fourth at Tokyo 2020 and the 2019 world championships.
But he’s never won a medal at either of those two top competitions.
Van Niekerk, who like Jobodwana is 29, showed signs last season of returning to form.
Jobodwana is still battling to regain a semblance of the shape he had until 2015, while Simbine continues to hunt for silverware at the world championships and Olympics.
I chatted to Jobodwana after his race on Saturday, and he spoke about the importance of having the right mental frame for competing in finals.
He recalled that going into the call room ahead of the 200m final in Beijing he was talking to Bolt, who told him to stay relaxed. Most of their competitors looked tense, Jobodwana added. “You mustn’t overthink it,” Jobodwana said.
Despite their highs, Jobodwana, Van Niekerk and Simbine have all experienced tough moments, demonstrating how hard athletics can be.
And yet it seems so much easier for Namibian Beatrice Masilingi.
On Saturday she was way ahead of the chasing pack, led by SA’s African 400m champion Miranda Coetzee, as she won the women’s 300m in 34.60 sec, which, according to the World Athletics website, is the second-fastest time in the world ever, behind only Shaunae Miller-Uibo.
That time also would have earned her seventh spot in the men’s race that was run a few minutes later.
It’s surely just a matter of time before World Athletics stretches its list of events for athletes with differences of sexual development to include the women’s 200m and possibly 100m.
Caster Semenya, refusing to undergo surgery or take medication to lower her naturally occurring high levels of testosterone, is prevented from competing in any race from 400m to the mile.
She was competitive over any distance from 400m to 1,500m, with the 800m being her premier race.
But even in that she was never fast enough to finish in the top eight of a local men’s race.
For example, she won the 800m at the SA championships in Stellenbosch in 2016 in 1:58.45, still behind the slowest time in the men’s final that year, 1:51.86.
Even her 1:55.28 season’s best that year, clocked while winning Olympic gold, wouldn’t have been a factor in the men’s race.
Semenya’s 800m best of 1:54.25 from 2018 ranks her fourth on the all-time list, and the only world mark she set was in the unofficial 600m, where she went 1:21.77.
Masilingi and compatriot Christine Mboma rose to prominence rapidly in 2021 ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. Both were competing in the 400m, where Mboma went 49.22 and Masilingi 49.53 (Semenya’s best in that event was 49.62 and over 300m it was 36.78).
Both were barred from the one lap ahead of the Tokyo Games, so they dropped to the 200m in which both made the final, Mboma taking silver in an under-20 world record and Masilingi finishing sixth.
They’re both potent athletes, but one has to wonder if they’re too potent for the sport’s world governing body, which could start throwing hurdles their way by widening the gender eligibility criteria.
Meanwhile, Jobodwana continues trying to find his way back and Simbine keeps searching for the podium.
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