Clash of Africa's athletic titans in SA

Johannesburg --- Athletes from Ghana and 13 other African countries including South Africa, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Senegal, Uganda, Namibia, Liberia, Lesotho today gathered in South Africa?s capital Pretoria for the annual Federation of African Sports Unions students athletics competition.

Thursday is the first of the two day competition which saw events such as pole vault, discus, hammer throw, javelin, 100m sprints, 400m sprints, 800m sprints, 4x100m relays, 1 500m race, 5 000m race, 10 000m race and the 110m hurdles taking place.

On Friday, events such as shot-put, high jump, long jump and triple jump as well as a 10km speed walk are scheduled to take place.

Team South Africa dominated throughout the morning in a number of sprinting events, but in the middle distance events, the athletes from Uganda and Ghana pulled through to take victory in many of the races.

It was South Africa?s day for field events with Wynand Coetzee taking the gold in the men?s discus with a distance of 49.44m. Hammer-throw was won by South African Johan Harmse with a distance of 58m.

In the ladies javelin, Team South Africa?s Sonnette Viljoen (Commonwealth champion) took the gold and clearly out-classed the rest of the competitors.

Zimbabwean discus thrower, Vengai Chiunye (24), who came third in his event, told AND that ?South Africa is a very nice country, and I have enjoyed the athletics today. Athletics in Zimbabwe is nearly the same and we have enough sponsorship at least.

Chiunye was representing Zimbabwe on behalf of the teachers training college in Gweru, where he is currently studying.

Another discus thrower, Maswahu Snyders from Windhoek, Namibia, told AND that ?although South Africa is a nice country, I miss home already. One thing I?ve noticed is the amount of beautiful women in South Africa. The athletics was great today and I look forward to tomorrow?.

Snyders, who only participated in the discus event says tomorrow he will be cheering on the 100 strong group of athletes that came down from Namibia to participate in the Fasu athletics competition.

Interesting to note was the fact that much of the noise coming from within the stadium during many of the events came from the athletes themselves, and the day?s athletics was generally badly attended by members of the public.

On Friday, the pressure is on Team South Africa?s javelin thrower Tommy du Toit who is looking to break the African student?s record that currently stands at 79m.