1928 — George Weightman-Smith equals the 14.8 sec 110m hurdles world record in the heats at the Amsterdam Olympics and then later that day in the semifinals he clocks 14.6 to break the mark. He ended fifth in the final the following day.
1952 — Joan Harrison, just 16, wins South Africa’s first Olympic swimming gold as she finishes first in the women’s 100m backstroke at the Helsinki Games. She clocked 1 min 14.3 sec to beat Holland’s Geertjie Wielema by two-tenths of a second. Luckily for the South African, Wielema produced her 1:13.8 Olympic record in the heats. Three days earlier Harrison ended fourth in the 100m freestyle in 1:07.01, but had she repeated the 1:06.5 she’d managed in the heats, she would have won gold. South Africa won 10 medals in all at those Games, but the only two golds came from the women, Harrison and high-jumper Esther Brand.
1952 — Raymond Robinson picked up two Olympic cycling medals on the same day at the Helsinki Games. First he ended third in the track time trial behind Australian Russell Mockridge and Italy’s Marino Morettin. Then he and Thomas Shardelow took silver in the men’s 2,000m tandem. They finished behind Mockridge and his Australian partner Lionel Cox and ahead of Italians Cesare Pinarello and Antonio Maspes, who went on to win several world championship titles.
1996 — Hezekiel Sepeng becomes the first black South African to win an Olympic medal when he takes silver in what was the fastest 800m race at the time with four men dipping under 1 min 43 sec. Sepeng, not the best tactical runner, was boxed in early on, and in the end his charge came too late to catch Vebjorn Rodal of Norway, the winner in a 1:42.58 Olympic record. Sepeng crossed the line in 1:42.74, also below the old Games record. Had the race been 10 metres longer, he would have surely caught Rodal.
2004 — Shaun Rubenstein takes bronze in the K1 marathon at the world championships in Bergen, Norway, clocking 2hr 43 min 30 sec behind Spaniard Manuel Busto Fernandez (2:42:03) and Michael Kongsgaard of Denmark (2:42:04).
2012 — Chad le Clos produces the upset of the London Olympics when he denies defending champion Michael Phelps a hat-trick of Games 200m butterfly gold medals. The South African touched the wall at the end of his stroke in 1 min 52.96 sec, just five-hundredths of a second ahead of the American legend who had led the race until then.
2012 — Phelps returned to the pool later in the evening to become the most prolific Olympic medal-winner of all time, taking gold in the 4x200m relay with the US team for his 19th career gong to surpass Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina on 18.
2013 — Olympic champions Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh win gold medals for South Africa at the world championships in Barcelona, with Giulio Zorzi adding a bronze. Le Clos cleaned up in the 200m butterfly, racing to victory in 1 min 54.32 sec to comfortably beat Poland’s Pawel Korzeniowski (1:55.01). Van der Burgh won gold in the 50m breaststroke by one-hundredth of a second, touching in 26.77 to edge out Australian Christian Sprenger. Van der Burgh’s training partner, Zorzi, was third in 27.04.
2021 — Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Sericka Jackson give Jamaica a podium clean-sweep in the women’s 100m at the Tokyo Olympics.
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