Caster saga puts award on ice

Johannesburg - The controversy surrounding Caster Semenya and her victory in the 800 metres at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin has resulted in the SA Athletics Statisticians (SAAS) taking a decision not to select a Female Athlete of the Year or make the Harry Beinart Award in time for publication in its 2010 NWU Puk South African Athletics Annual.

These awards will be finalised once the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has made a ruling about Semenya's status.

However, a photograph of Semenya has been placed on the cover of the Annual, which has just been published. She appears with men's 800-metre world champion Mbulaeni Mulaudzi to celebrate South Africa's brilliant success in the two-lap race in Berlin.

The 58th edition of the Annual, one of the oldest national athletics annuals in the world, has been enlarged to 248 pages (the biggest it has been since 2003) and is again crammed with information about everything that happened on the athletics scene in South Africa and the rest of the world in 2009.

The Annual is dedicated to the memory of Allister Matthews, one of the three founding members of the SAAS in 1954 (with Harry Beinart and Arrie Joubert). Matthews passed away in 2009.

As usual, it contains all the best performances by South African senior, junior and youth athletes and road runners for the past year (2009), as well as all-time lists; a Hall of Fame of the best of the best in the history of SA athletics; SA and all major international records; results of the most important local and international meetings; photographs of South Africa's top athletes, and much more.

Mulaudzi was selected as Male Athlete of the Year after what author Richard Mayer describes in his article, "Mulaudzi fulfils SA middle distance destiny", as one of the greatest ever performances by a South African athlete on the world stage.

Mulaudzi won the world title with courageous front-running tactics and finished the year with third place on the world list. The other four athletes nominated for the award were Khotso Mokoena, LJ van Zyl, Willem Coertzen and Ruben Ramolefi. Van Zyl, with his second place on the 400-metre hurdles world list, will receive the Beinart Award if Semenya is declared ineligible.

This prestigious award is given annually to the highest placed SA athlete on the world lists.

The female nominees, apart from Semenya, are Sunette Viljoen, René Kalmer, Anne-rien van Schalkwyk and Tsholofelo Thipe, who graces the back cover of the Annual.

JP van der Merwe, Mulaudzi's coach, has been selected as the second SAAS Coach of the Year.