Wilhelm de Swardt

Pretoria – South Africa’s 800m women’s world champion Caster Semenya surprisingly participated in a league athletics meeting at Tukkies on Saturday.

It was the first time that Semenya was in action following her withdrawal last year from the South African team for the Commonwealth Games with a back injury.

While her winning time of 2 minutes 9.60 seconds is nothing to get excited about, her coach, Michael Seme, was satisfied.

“The plan was not for Caster to run a quick time. It was really nothing else than a hard training session. We wanted to ascertain how her back would respond if she participated in a race,” he said.

“It went well. Caster said afterwards that her back was still worrying her, but it’s nothing serious.”

Seme said that there was now a good chance of her participating in the Yellow Pages series earlier than what had been planned.

Meanwhile, Simoné du Toit has improved her personal best in the women’s shotput for the second time in two weeks at an indoor meeting at Houston on Saturday.

She managed a distance op 17.49m after getting to 17.45m at an indoor meeting in Dallas two weeks before that.

Her father, Boesman, said that his daughter had been very frustrated because so many things went wrong before the meeting.

Not only did she strain her neck in the bus, but the bus driver also could not find his way.

This led to the athletes turning up late at the meeting and there not being any time for Du Toit to warm up.

“Simoné basically just pitched up at the stadium and then had to start participating. She was nearly in tears afterwards because she believes she might have been able to get to 18m had things turned out differently,” he said.

Meanwhile, Anika Smit, Commonwealth champion in 2006, managed 1,83m in the high jump at a meeting at the University of Pretoria.

Her winning height is better than the one that won the gold medal at last year’s South African senior meeting.

Smit was very excited about her performance.

“I know that I’m capable of a better height. In spite of making silly errors, I believe I can reach 1.86 or 1.88m,” she said.

“I wasn’t under any pressure on Saturday. If I participate in bigger events, I believe the adrenaline will kick in and I will be able to jump higher. My goal is to jump really well at the South African meeting in Durban.”

• Tlou Selobi of Benoni High School beat a number of international athletes on her way to winning the 800m in a time of 1:48.20 in a league meeting in Germiston.

Kristof van Malen (Belgium) was second in 1:49.20, Chris Reynolds of Britain third in 1:50.10 and Warren Frey of Britain fourth in 1:52.20.

Belgium’s Kim Ruell won the 1500m in 3:51.30. Toriso Raisela was second in 3:54.1.