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Hamman anticipating Rio team announcement

Cape Town - Hurdler Le Roux Hamman notched up his third consecutive sub-50 second one-lapper in Belgium at the weekend.

According to SASCOC, the Pretoria athlete, who ran an Olympic qualifying time in Pretoria in late May, is showing some fine consistency as he, like the bulk of South Africa’s athletes, await the final Rio selection team news.

"This last race was in Lokeren, a smaller meeting but with some good athlete who all still want to qualify," Hamman told Road to Rio 2016 as he prepared to jet back to South Africa for more training.

"Because of so many people there were four or five heats in every event. The race itself was very nice. I ran 49.61 and that’s now a feature of my running, I’m running consistent times.

"My times here in Europe were 49.44, 49.61 and 49.66 so its an overall win for me. Now I can head home, eat some nice quality meat and wait until that team is announced. Of course, now the hard work starts all over again... a few hard weeks with lots of lactic acid sessions."

Hamman was one of a bunch of South Africans in action.

There was also a win for long-jumper Zarck Visser, his winning jump (and his best of the year so far) coming with his third attempt. Runner-up was Ignisious Gaisah of Netherlands in 7.78m.

Former world championships bronze medallist Johan Cronje took seventh in the 1500m with a time of 3:42.41 as he still chases the qualifying time. Race winner was Belgium’s Peter Callahan in 3:39.44.

Hamman’s brother Muntingh took third in the men’s 110m hurdles in 14.11 seconds, then Walter Ungerer took third in the 100m in 10.55, Henco Uys was 11th in the 800m in 1:53.32.

The final South African Olympic Games team will be announced on July 14, while the Paralympic Games team will be announced prior to that on Wednesday (July 6).

The Rio Olympics will take begin from August 5–21, while the Paralympic Games is set to begin September 7-18.

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