When London 2012 belonged to South Africa: and where the next medal will come from

Making his point: Cameron van der Burgh after winning Africa's first gold

SPINE-TINGLING moments are rare for South African Olympians. But for an all-too-brief 15 minutes on Sunday night, London 2012 belonged to the Rainbow Nation.
After two days of agony which saw cycling road race contenders Daryll Impey and Asleigh Moolman finish empty-handed and the women’s footballers Banyana Banyana knocked-out after defeats against Sweden and Japan, the promised land of 12 medals looked unobtainable.
Charl Crous (men’s 100m backstroke) and Wendy Trott (women’s 400m freestyle) finished last in their heats and when our much-hyped hockey girls were thumped 7-1 by Argentina, the social networks were abuzz with complaints from patriotic South Africans watching the games of the 30th Olympiad.
My reply was simply to point the twittering cynics towards a better time, a better place. Specifically 9.11pm at the sparkling new Aqua Centre in Olympic Park.
The night before, Van der Burgh left defending Beijing champion Kosuke Kitajima of Japan in his wake with an Olympic record 58.83secs in the 100m breaststroke semi-final. He went to London with the world’s fifth-fastest time but went in to the final as the fastest qualifier.
There was never any doubt that Van der Burgh – allegedly stronger over the non-Olympic 50m than he is over two lengths – would be South Africa’s first medallist in London. And there was no doubt he would reach the turn at the front of the field.
The surprises came with his enduring pace over the final length, the ease with which he won gold, and that world record finishing time of 58.46secs which left a stunned favourite Kitajima 1.33secs behind in fifth place with Australia’s Christian Sprenger taking silver and Brendan Hansen of the US in third.
The commentator screamed: “Van der Burgh is tiring, he’s a one-length specialist” but the truth was the 24-year-old had simply blown the rest of the world away and Australia’s Brenton Rickard was left trailing in sixth-place as his global mark was shattered by 0.12secs.
Afterwards the Crawford College old boy gasped: “The world record doesn’t matter. Just to be an Olympian, an Olympic champion, puts you in a club which nobody can take away from you.”
The beauty of Van der Burgh’s triumph lies in the fact that, unlike so many other South African swimmers, he is home-schooled. Cameron does his training at the University of Pretoria, as part of an academy which also saw AmaTuks graduate to the Premier Soccer League last season as well as producing top class tennis players and golfers.
In less than a minute, Cameron had won Africa’s first medal and improved on the entire South African medal haul from Beijing four years ago, where long-jumper Khotso Mokoena won a single silver in a bleak Chinese fortnight.
For the first time in eight years, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAFrika boomed out across an Olympic venue, and Van Der Burgh could barely keep his composure, taking huge breaths to keep the tears from overwhelming him.
Holding his emotions in check, he grinned: “I chose just the right time to swim the perfect race. That’s what I’ll be able to tell my children.”
Van der Burgh, who started swimming seriously at 11, confesses: “I love what I do and never feel like I’m actually working. Playing in the pool all day isn’t so bad.”
And now for further medals – 11 of them, if Sascoc are to maintain their optimistic schedule in London.
Cameron’s fellow swimmer Chad Le Clos, the 20-year-old from Durban, has chances after finishing an impressive fifth in the 400m individual medley behind American giant Ryan Lochte.
But even if Le Clos misses out in his favourite 200m butterfly tonight or the 200m medley on Friday, there’s always the men’s lightweight four in the rowing at Eton Dorney on Thursday where Lawrence Ndlovu, John Smith, Matthew Brittain and James Thomson are hoping to build on their second-place finish at the World Cup in Lucerne earlier this year.
But for real bullion, we need only look to today’s triathlon in the London docklands for medal-hungry South Africans.
That’s where South Africa have real medal hopes, centring on Richard Murray, the 23-year-old from Cape Town, who won the swim-cycle-run World Cup event in Hamburg on the Saturday before the Olympics, over-shadowed by Hashim Amla’s 311 not out and Ernie Els’ Open triumph.
By the time the athletics starts – with javelin thrower Sunette Viljoen, 800m champion Caster Semenya, Mokoena, the 4x400m men’s relay and 400m hurdler LJ Van Zyl all medal contenders – South Africa may well have a few more medals in the bag before Burry Stander’s mountain biking on the final Sunday of London 2012.
And as I write this column remember this: South Africa are currently leading hosts Great Britain in the medals table – Lewis Hamilton was the only British winner of the weekend. And his Grand Prix triumph came a distant 1 500km away in Hungary.

London 2012: what you can expect from tonight's Opening Ceremony

Breaking barriers: Roger Bannister

TONIGHT’S London 2012 Opening Ceremony gets underway at 9pm in Great Britain – 10pm in South Africa – with Danny Boyle’s lavish £27m production shrouded in secrecy.

Despite numerous rehearsals each witnessed by 60,000 people, the great event – and the identity of the torch-lighter – has been kept under wraps with those in the know proudly tweeting coded references with the hash-tag #keepthesurprise.

But utter secrecy cannot be ensured in the modern age of social networking when gossip crosses oceans faster than it used to cross the street. Especially when you have hundreds of nurses involved.

What we can say is that the ceremony will be packed with British cultural references which will completely bemuse those in South Africa and beyond.

There will be no jet-packed Ironman from Los Angeles 1984, nor the wall-running Superman from Beijing, the superheroes on show feature James Bond and Mary Poppins - though the visual effects from the superb South African 2010 World Cup opening will come in to play.

The production will start with Boyle, something of an anti-estblishment figure, dressing up the 65,000 capacity Stratford Stadium as England’s “green and pleasant land”. The grass and oak tree, plus traditional English rain clouds, are already in place. A 27-ton bell will get proceedings underway just hours after Big Ben five miles away bonged for ages to herald the games’ arrival.

We will see 12 horses, three cows, 70 sheep, three sheepdogs and a horse-drawn plough if the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals doesn’t get involved. Despite rumours from New Zealand, the wooly, four-legged types won’t actually be competing in the 30^th edition of the modern Olympiad.

The “green and pleasant bit” also features families having picnics, milkmaids and, ironically considering it's not an Olympic event, a village cricket game with players in caps and braces.

All this will please the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall not to mention another 120 world leaders including Michelle Obama, Americans' first lady.

We were expecting to see invasions from horn-helmeted Scandinavian Vikings and Romans as Boyle takes us rapidly through a pastiche of British history… culminating in the 17^th Century Industrial Revolution. All the while, expect to see pretty young things dancing around the traditional pagan maypole with ribbons.

At one end of the stadium we’ll see an oak tree on a hill representing the history Glastonbury Tor, at the other end, something from Last Night of the Proms with musical backing featuring The Jam’s Going Underground and Vangelis’s classic sporting anthem, Chariots of Fire.

The transition from medieval Shakespeare (some of the early bits are based on a passage called Isles of Wonder from The Tempest) to Frankensteinian dark Satanic mills will shake up the crowd as we hit modern times, the bit the Conservatives in the current UK coalition government are most worried about.

At this point, expect labouring weavers, miners, steel workers and engineers backed by Lionel Bart’s Food Glorious Food, the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction, and the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant. Yes, the Sex Pistols. Punk rock, remember that?

The final segment revolves around two young girls going “out on the town” for a traditional Saturday night together. An army of real nurses – who have been rehearsing in a “Guantanamo-style” facility in dodgy Dagenham down the road – will lead a celebration of Britain’s National Health Service.

Then the iconic British references hit us hard and fast. Paul McCartney will sing “Hey Jude”, the great Beatles hit from the 60s, then the equally ancient pop group Mud will blast out Tiger Feet.

Expect to hear Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the late Amy Winehouse’s Valerie. And then witness “about 40” Mary Poppins figures, using umbrellas for parachutes, drop in to take on Harry Potter’s evil enemy Voldemort. Daniel Craig, who will be in the stadium, has pre-recorded a James Bond sequence for the Olympics, though there are some who believe David Beckham will leap out of the Bond-style helicopter live in the stadium.

The torch-lighting itself – which I believe will be carried about by Sir Roger Bannister, the 83-year-old who first broke the four-minute barrier for the mile in 1957 – involves a complex “fuse” mechanism which will burn a path along the hoardings to the permanent flame, which will be housed on the rim of the stadium roof at Stratford for the duration of both the Olympics and Paralympics for the next month.

Bookmakers stopped taking bets on Bannister blazing his octogenarian trail, though Queen Elizabeth II, King David of Los Angeles, decathlete Daley Thompson and Britain’s most successful ever Olympian Sir Steve Redgrave are also hovering hopefully with those boxes of very long matches.

And then, finally, the athletes enter. Caster Semenya will carry the flag for South Africa and Maria Sharapova will lead Russia as the 205 nations and most of their 100,000 athletes are encouraged to move swiftly around the track by a high-tempo march by Underworld, who featured on Boyle’s Trainspotting soundtrack. They've been politely asked NOT to delay proceedings by over-use of smart phones. Greece will lead the nations in, then everyone will be in alphabetical order until the hosts, Great Britain, enter last.

And, apart from a couple of speeches from International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge and London 2012 chairman Seb Coe, will be that.

The real start of the Olympics, the winning of the first goal medal, will take place tomorrow on The Mall, where the men’s roadrace ends after 250km involving multiple climbs of Boxhill in Surrey. Among the favourites? Mark Cavendish of Great Britain and Darryl Impey of South Africa, both fresh from the Tour de France.

Let the Games begin!

South Africa's medal-winning schedule for London 2012. Hopefully.

The spear: Sunette Viljoen is a contender in the javelin

After a sensational weekend which saw Ernie Els, Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn, Richard Murray and even Ajax Cape Town hailed as world-beaters around the globe, it's time to turn our attention to the London Olympics.

Though the top-secret opening ceremony (which will, I can reveal, may feature David Beckham as James Bond) is only on Friday, South Africa's campaign gets underway tomorrow with the football girls Banyana Banyana playing Sweden.

Though Banyana are unlikely to create an upset and take a medal, I reckon South Africa has SEVEN big medal chances, most significantly in the pool, though they may yet reach Sports Minister Fikile Mbulula's hoped-for haul of 12.

Below I've listed all the dates when South Africa can expect to claim silverware (bronzeware or even goldware).

With the swimming starting on Saturday, Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Bergh are both ranked in the world's top ten in several different events, with Le Clos likely to reach the final in both medley events (featuring all four strokes) and Van der Bergh strong in the breast-stroke over 100m and 200m.

The athletics doesn't get underway until August 3, with Caster Semenya, Khotso Mokoena, Sunette Viljoen and men’s 4x400m our most likely medalists. Semenya will have to improve significantly on her 800m times so far this year where she falls outside the world's top ten, but she has done this before, peaking out of the blue. She is predicted to win gold by the athletics bible, Track and Field Weekly.

Long-jumper Mokoena, our only medal-winner in Beijing four years ago, is an almost certain finalist, along with javelinist Viljoen and the men's 4x400m team, which might include Oscar "Bladerunner" Pistorius, who ran in the qualifiers when the team won silver at the World Championships. Pistorius, the first amputee to compete in an Olympics, admits "a strong semi-final" is as far as he's going to get in the individual 400m.

Keep an eye out too for LJ Van Zyl, the one-lap relay specialist who is also an outside hope in the men's 400m hurdles.

After his first world triathlon triumph in Hamburg last Saturday, Richard Murray, the 23-year-old from Cape Town, could big news on Tuesday, August 7 when the men take to the water, bike and trainers.

The three big team events (women’s football and men’s and women’ hockey) offer outside hopes too, particularly women's hockey, though all three teams are ranked outside the podium places.

Cycling could be another rich source of valuable metal for South Africa. Mountain-biker Burry Stander, a World Cup winner in Pietermaritzburg last season, is listed on my schedule of potential medal winners below, along with women’s road race contender Ashleigh Moolman and BMX hopeful Sifiso Nhlapo, so unlucky in Beijing.

I'm told Bridgitte Hartley could also medal in K1 500 canoeing among the blazing paddles at Dorney, and the men's coxless lightweight four came second in the last World Cup in Lucerne. There are other outside chances, but I’ve listed all the above below, featuring only Le Clos and Vd Bergh's strongest events. South Africa could also feature in the men's relay finals, Le Clos is entered for a record SEVEN events at the brand new aquadome.

SA medal winning Olympic schedule (* marks medal chance):

Wednesday, 25: Women’s football kicks off tomorrow with Banyana Banyana v Sweden

Friday, 27: Opening ceremony, watch out for Vikings and Romans

Saturday 28: Banyana Banyana second game

*Sunday 29: Women’s road race cycling: Ashleigh Moolman

*Sunday 29: Men’s 100m breast-stroke: Cameron vd Bergh
*Tuesday, 31: Men's 200m Butterfly: Chad Le Clos

*Thursday 2: Rowing: Men's lightweight four: Brittain, Ndlovu, Smith, Thompson
*Friday 3: Men's 100m Butterfly: Chad Le Clos

*Saturday 4: Men’s long jump final: Khotso Mokoena

*Sunday 5: Men’s 100m final: Usain Bolt etc and women’s marathon with strong SA team

*Tuesday 7: Men’s triathlon: Richard Murray

*Thursday 9: Women’s K1 500: Bridgitte Hartley

*Thursday 9: Women’s javelin final, Sunette Viljoen.

*Friday 10: Men’s BMX final: Sifiso Nhlapo

*Friday 10: Men’s 4x400m relay: Oscar Pistorius, Van Zyl, Fredericks, Ofentse Mogawane, Willie de Beer and Shaun de Jager.

Friday 10: Women’s hockey final

Saturday 11: Men’s hockey final

*Saturday 11: Final of women’s 800m: Caster Semenya

*Sunday 12: Men's mountain biking: Burry Stander