Tatjana Smith showed that she has ice running through her veins when she surged to the gold medal in the women’s 100m breaststroke at the 2024 Paris Olympics on Monday night.
It’s one thing going into a final as the favourite, no matter how much you try to play down that tag. And favourite she was, after blitzing to wins in both the Sunday heats and semi-finals in identical times of 1:05.00. However, it’s another thing delivering on that.
Especially when you turn at the wall in fourth place and out of the medals at halfway. That was exactly the scenario as China’s Quinting Tang led Ireland’s Mona McSharry and Italy’s Benedetto Pilato down the home stretch.
Turning on the turbos, Smith picked off her rivals one by one. First Pilato. Into bronze. Then McSharry. Into silver. And then to touch off Tang. Gold.
The time was 1:05.28, which was slower than her identical marks in both the heats and semi-finals on Monday. That’s not important right now. The gold medal is what counts and it took Team SA’s total to three, after Alan Hatherly won bronze earlier in the men’s mountain biking cross-country.
Smith’s own Olympics tally has now grown to three, with two golds and a silver, and one more will see her equal Chad le Clos on four, the most of any South African Olympian. The chances of her adding to that total later in the week are high, given she’s the reigning champion in the 200m.
Smith had shown that she was in superb shape heading into the final, after swimming identical times of 1:05.00 in both Sunday’s morning heats and the evening semi-final. That was only 0.18sec behind her Games record from Tokyo and a full half second quicker that her rivals. At this level half a second is a substantial advantage over 100m.
Perhaps surprising is that she touched at the turn in 30.62, compared to the 30.63 and 30.57 in Sunday’s races. That means she came back over the last 50m slower than she had in both races leading into the final but she still nabbed the three swimmers who were ahead of her with 50m to go.
“I had no idea where I was, literally most of the race,” admitted Smith afterwards. “I actually didn’t think I medalled because when I turned to my left, the two blocks next to me both had lights on and it felt like someone else on the other side touched first.
“So I actually didn’t think I was medalling. My main goal was just to not do what I did in Tokyo and look around, so literally the last 15 metres, I was like, no, close your eyes, let’s just go.”
Only minutes earlier had Pieter Coetze walked to the blocks as a realistic medal contender in the men’s 100m backstroke. To give an indication of how competitive the event was, and the depth of the stroke in the sport, all eight finalists came from different countries.
Coetze reacted slowest to the gun and had it all to do from there. He worked his way to the wall in fifth spot and that’s where he stayed as Italy’s Thomas Ceccon finished strongly to claim gold.
One needs to remember that Coetze is still only 20 and already competing in his second Olympics. He barged his way into the final having set the joint third fastest time in the semi-finals and stood an obvious chance of winning a medal if he could replicate that performance. Not only did he replicate it, but he bettered it by 0.05sec, lowering the African record to 52.58. His time is coming.
Long after the big crowd had packed up and made their way home, Hatherly was still trying to come to terms with the enormity of what he had achieved on a muggy Monday afternoon in Paris.
But when he wakes up on Tuesday he will know that the dream is indeed reality. The Team SA cyclist, claimed the Olympic bronze medal in the men’s mountain biking at Paris 2024, becoming the first South African to win a medal in the sport since returning from international isolation at the 1992 Games.
The 28-year-old produced a ride full of character to follow Tom Pidcock and Victor Koretzky across the finish in front of where the crowd lined the route in unashamed support of their hometown hero Koretzky.
The eight-lap course at Elancourt Hill offers the most spectacular views of the city and indeed of the iconic Eiffel Tower but this was no time for sightseeing. It was a case of head-down and go through all the pain barriers that would come his way for every second of the 86 minutes and 33 seconds that it would take him to ride his race.
Hatherly has always promised big things and arrived in Paris in the form of his life, having won back-to-back World Cup events. In his second Olympics he looked to be one of the men to beat. And so it proved.
“It was an unbelievable race,” he said a few hours later, still pinching himself. “It was both super fast and tactical. I managed to clear the charge early on and led for the first lap. The race started to happen after that and I got caught out a bit. I slipped back (to fifth) and had to chase hard to get back into the medal position.
“And when Tom had his mechanical (puncture) I moved up to second. My plan was to empty the tank the last two laps and with Tom coming back I held on to him as he made his way to the front. There was a massive battle for the medals on that last lap.
“It’s every athlete’s dream to get an Olympic medal and now that I have got one, I’m still lost for words. It’s going to take some time. It still hasn’t sunk in. It’s been a career goal of mine since I was a child. To have achieved it today is such a joy.
“I ticked all the boxes in terms of nothing going wrong and not making mistakes. It’s truly a dream come true for me to win a medal for Team SA at the Olympics.”
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