Blast from the past: De Klerk lowers her own 100m SA record

1957 — Gert Potgieter breaks the world 440-yard hurdles record as he clocks 50.7 sec at the national championships in Queenstown. At the time Potgieter didn’t know he’d broken the mark, admitting afterwards he had no idea what the world record was. The official mark for the distance was 51.3, held by Soviet athlete Yuriy Lituyev. But his world record over the official distance of 400-metre hurdles — or 437 yards and one foot — was 50.4. 

1990 — Evette de Klerk lowers her SA 100-metre record to 11.06 sec winning the national title in Germiston, though she was disappointed not to dip under 11 seconds. In the heats earlier in the day she had clocked a wind-assisted 10.98, which would have made her the second-fastest woman of all time behind Flo Griffiths-Joyner. Her heat was the only one to register illegal wind assistance.