The Week that was in SA Sports — Sports Wrap

22 July — The week that was in South African Sports and what's com­ing up — by Guy Mortimer

Oscar still fall­ing short
Twenty-two-year-old double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius fin­ished a respect­able fourth in the 400m event in Velletri, Italy, on Saturday. The Pretoria-based Pistorius, aptly nick­named the ‘Blade Runner’ due to his car­bon fibre pros­theses, was hop­ing to qual­ify for next month’s World Athletics Championships in Berlin, but his time of 47.42 sec was 1.87 sec adrift of the dif­fi­cult 45.55 sec qual­i­fy­ing standard.

Consequently, Pistorius will prob­ably have to wait until 2010 to qual­ify for a major able-bodied event as there are no more global cham­pi­on­ships tak­ing place this year. However, he still has till August 3 to make the South African team for Berlin and had the sat­is­fac­tion of defeat­ing seasoned Mauritian run­ner Eric Milazar on Saturday - albeit by a mere one hun­dredth of a second. The race was won by Michael Mathieu of the Bahamas in 46.81 sec ...

Phillip still wants to put ‘em up
Although Lovemore ‘The Black Panther’ Ndou, 37, will still be savour­ing his recent win over name­sake Phillip ‘The Time Bomb’ Ndou, 32, the younger fighter is by no means dis­cour­aged by the loss and will def­in­itely not be retir­ing from the sport he loves. Phillip, a former world cham­pion, took a lot of pun­ish­ment from Lovemore in their International Boxing Organisation (IBO) wel­ter­weight title fight at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park last week­end, but nev­er­the­less gave a good account of him­self against a very strong oppon­ent, who has faced the best box­ing has to offer in a dis­tin­guished 14-year pro­fes­sional career.

It was only the fourth time that Phillip has tasted defeat in 36 paid bouts and his per­form­ance on the night, where he made his more exper­i­enced oppon­ent work every inch for his vic­tory, was encour­aging and sug­ges­ted that he still has a future in the ring. Trainer Welcome Ncita said he would meet with Phillip and busi­ness man­ager Butityi Konki to dis­cuss the fighter’s future. Phillip returned to box­ing earlier in the year after a four-year lay­off due to a cyst on the brain, which mira­cu­lously cleared up late last year.

Meanwhile, KwaZulu-Natal born Moruthi Mthalane will square off against Mexican dynamo Julio Cesar Miranda for the International Boxing Federation (IBF) fly­weight title recently relin­quished by Philipino fighter Nonito Donaire who has moved up to the junior ban­tam­weight divi­sion to fight for the World Boxing Association (WBA) interim title.

Donaire, who refused to defend his IBF crown against Mthalane, will take on Rafael Concepcion of Colombia in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 15. Mthalane was hold­ing his own against Donaire in their IBF title fight in Las Vegas on November 1 last year, but the fight was stopped in the sixth round after the South African sus­tained a deep cut over one of his eyes, prompt­ing offi­cials to turn to the score cards and announce the Philippino as the win­ner. Mirande earnt the right to face Mthalane for the vacant crown by knock­ing out fel­low Mexican Eric Ortiz in the first round of their bout earlier this month.

Shaun wisely calls it quits
Veteran South African climber Sean Wisedale has decided to with­draw from an inter­na­tional exped­i­tion to climb the feared K2 peak, the second highest moun­tain in the world at a daunt­ing 8 611m. Wisedale stumbled upon the remains of a human body while tack­ling the moun­tain and this incid­ent, coupled with a sim­ilar find­ing by Wisedale’s Turkish team-mate, Tunc Findik, and the death of Michele Fait, an Italian skier who fell to his death about two and a half weeks ago on K2’s sum­mit, unnerved Wisedale to such an extent that he decided to with­draw from the expedition.

Many climbers con­sider K2 to be the most dif­fi­cult moun­tain in the world to climb and the peak is infam­ous for claim­ing the life of one climber for every four who reach its sum­mit. On any given day the “treach­er­ous moun­tain,” as it is referred to be many climbers, presents chal­lenges that include storms, strong winds, snow, rock­slides, cre­vasses and ava­lanches with climbers run­ning the risk of suf­fer­ing phys­ical and men­tal exhaus­tion, mal­nu­tri­tion, dehyd­ra­tion, hypo­ther­mia, frost­bite and even cereb­ral haemorrhage.

Wisedale was the first South African to reach the seven highest sum­mits on all seven con­tin­ents and was also the first South African to take on the dev­il­ish K2.

Hashim makes merry for Essex
Proteas bats­men Hashim Amla, who also plays for the Nashua Dolphins in South African domestic cricket, has signed for English county side Essex until the end of July and the English fran­chise must be delighted with their invest­ment after Amla became the highest scor­ing debutant for the county.

The KwaZulu-Natal nat­ive fash­ioned an excel­lent 181 runs from 327 balls in a little under seven hours at the crease as he helped Essex grab a most unlikely draw against County Championship Division Two rivals Glamorgan on July 10.

Despite his team trail­ing their oppon­ents by a massive 315 runs on the first innings, Amla was his usual calm self in his famil­iar num­ber three pos­i­tion and pro­duced a ster­ling dis­play of cal­cu­lated stroke play to help Essex to a respect­able 411/6 in their second innings to stave off defeat.

Amla fol­lowed up his ton with an unbeaten 81 against Surrey in his next county innings to prove that his big score against Glamorgan wasn’t a fluke and has now scored 292 runs at an aver­age of 97.33 with one cen­tury and one half cen­tury in just two matches for Essex. Amla has also enjoyed suc­cess for his new county in the shorter ver­sion of the game, scor­ing another cen­tury, this time as an open­ing bats­man, when mak­ing his debut for Essex in the 40-over pro40 com­pet­i­tion on July 13.

‘Goose’ just off the pace as Stewart cinks Watson
American Stewart Cink nar­rowly defeated coun­try­men Tom Watson to claim his first vic­tory in the 138^th British Open at Turnberry, Scotland over the week­end. The 36-year-old Cink defeated the 59-year-old vet­eran Watson in a play­off after both play­ers had recor­ded a total of 278 for two under par over the four rounds. It was a remark­able achieve­ment by Watson who was just under the age limit of 60 for the tournament.

South Africans Retief Goosen (280), Ernie Els and Thomas Aiken (both 281) pro­duced some solid golf to fin­ish joint fifth and eighth respect­ively, but it was Cink who stole the show with a superb dis­play of driv­ing, chip­ping and put­ting to edge out Watson in an excit­ing play­off. Other South Africans in the field included James Kingston (284), Richard Sterne (285) and Branden Grace (287).

Boks face stern test against All Blacks
All eyes will be fixed on Vodacom Park in Bloemfontein on Saturday when the Springboks began their Tri-Nations cam­paign against New Zealand fresh from an excel­lent win over Australia over the week­end. The All-Blacks will start as slight favour­ites over the Boks, but a gigantic tussle is expec­ted between these two fierce rivals with no quarter given or asked for. Centre Wynand Olivier has been recalled to the Springbok camp as cover for Adrian Jacobs who is strug­gling with a groin injury.

The ABSA Currie Cup Premier Division com­pet­i­tion entered its second round and four games were played and decided this past Friday and Saturday. The Sharks scored a com­fort­able 46–10 win over an ordin­ary look­ing Boland out­fit at the ABSA Stadium in Durban on Friday with young fly­half Guy Cronje hav­ing a ster­ling game for the home side. Griquas are mak­ing early waves in the com­pet­i­tion and fol­lowed up their upset win over the Free State Cheetahs the pre­vi­ous week by com­fort­ably defeated new­comers the Leopards 36–11. The res­ult means that Griquas retain their pos­i­tion at the top of the log after two rounds.

The Lions made up for their open­ing round 13–19 loss to the mighty Blue Bulls by sur­pris­ing a feisty Cheetahs out­fit at the Coca-Cola Park sta­dium in Johannesburg. The men from the Free State must have thought they had the game in the bag after a good first half in which they outscored their oppon­ents 19–13. However, the Lions roared back in the second stanza, scor­ing 18 well-taken points to the Cheetahs’ three to run out deserving 31–22 win­ners. It was a dis­ap­point­ing loss for the Cheetahs who are no under early pres­sure in the com­pet­i­tion, hav­ing lost both their games. In the final game of the round the Blue Bulls pro­duced a gutsy per­form­ance to out­last a strong and determ­ined Western province out­fit 30–22. Although Province enjoyed the lions share of the pos­ses­sion they failed to cap­it­al­ise on their advant­ages and ended up loos­ing a match they should have won. Full credit though to the Bulls though for pulling off the win and mak­ing it two wins out of two in the early running.

Third round action on Friday sees the Sharks con­front the Bulls in Durban while Western Province take on the Cheetahs in Cape Town. Saturday’s games pit high-flying Griquas against lowly Boland in Kimberley while the Lions will be hop­ing to sharpen their claws on the Leopards at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace in Phokeng.

Western Province are the 2009 Coco-Cola under-18 Craven week cham­pi­ons. The boys from the Cape recor­ded an excel­lent come from behind win against a strong Free State side to run out 19–17 win­ners in a pulsat­ing encounter at the Border Rugby Union Stadium in East London. With just 10 minutes remain­ing on the clock and trail­ing 14–17, full­back Craig Barry scored the match-winning try for Province. It was a fit­ting finale to a fant­astic tour­na­ment with the qual­ity of rugby on dis­play being of a very high standard.

City edge Chiefs in tight affair
English Premiership divi­sion side Manchester City defeated a spir­ited Kaizer Chiefs out­fit 1–0 in their Vodacom Challenge show­down at Durban’s Absa Stadium on Tuesday night. City skip­per Stephen Ireland scored the only goal of the match late in first half injury time when he steered the ball past Chiefs goal­keeper Itumeleng Khune after col­lect­ing a pass from Kelvin Etuhu. Chiefs tried hard to level mat­ters but were without luck as their live wire mid­fielder David Mathebula missed two attempts at goal in the 50^th minute. Although City did struggle some­what in this encounter they did well to recover from there dis­ap­point­ing 2–0 defeat to Orlando Pirates last Saturday.

Chiefs play Pirates tomor­row (Thursday, 23 July) at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth.

Photo Credits:
Oscar still fall­ing short: Oscar Pistorius / Source – www.cenewsblog.com/
Phillip still wants to put ‘em up – Phillip Ndou / Source – www.goldengloves.co.za/
Shaun wisely calls it quits – Shaun Wisedale / Source – www.ventureout.co.za/
Hashim makes merry for Essex – Hashim Amla / Source – supersport.co.za/
‘Goose’ just off the pace as Stewart cinks Watson – Retief Goosen / Source – www.scottishgolfview.com/
Boks face stern test against All Blacks – Wynand Olivier / Source – www.daylife.com/
City edge Chiefs in tight affair – Itumeleng Khune / Source – www.zimbio.com/