ATHLETICS NEWS - Tuks’s athletes will have to take the Olympic motto of faster, higher and stronger to heart on Friday in Potchefstroom if they want to have any chance of defending the Varsity Athletics title.
Since 2016 Tuks dominated Varsity Athletics winning thrice in succession overall. However, this time around, for them to have any chance retaining the title it means one, hopefully, more athletes need to come up with astonishing performances.
After the first Varsity Athletics meeting in Stellenbosch Tuks is third overall, 156 points adrift from Pukke and 111 points behind UJ.
Varsity Athletics is about excellence. The faster an athlete run, the higher or furthers the jump or, the more metres with each throw the more points are scored. Just winning races won’t cut it for Tuks on Friday.
It could be reasoned that if the likes of Tuks’s two 400m-hurdles world junior champions, Socks Zazini and Zeney van der Walt, or Thembo Monareng who was fourth in the 100m at the World Junior Championships are all are marginally faster than they were in Stellenbosch things might look up for Tuks. But it will be unfair just to depend on the three of them.
Theuns Ehlers who won the 800m in Stellenbosch running 1:49.28 is definitely capable of earning extra points for Tuks. At school, he started out as a sprinter. His best time in the 100 metres used to be 10.75s. It was after he missed out being selected as a hurdler for his high school’s team that he decided to take on a new challenge, competing in middle distance races.
