South African Wayde van Niekerk runs himself into the ground to spring 400m surprise at world championships
Long after two of the all-time greats at 400 metres had left the track in second and third place, the winner was sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath and getting his pulse checked by a medic.
This is how 23-year-old Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa made a name for himself at the world championships on Wednesday night, while also inserting that name on the “People to Watch” list for next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
It’s what the sport is all about. You get to the championships, and you leave it all on the track
A muggy evening at the Bird’s Nest started with Usain Bolt laughing as he cruised into the finish of his winning 200-metre semi-final heat to set up another gold-medal showdown with Justin Gatlin. It ended with Van Niekerk topping two Olympic and world champions, LaShawn Merritt and Kirani James, before being carted off the track on a stretcher, then loaded into an ambulance.
Van Niekerk was taken to the hospital for precautionary measures, then released later in the evening.
“He told us he was going to make mincemeat out of them,” said the chairman of the South African track team, Pieter Lourens.
In many ways, the 400 is the most brutal race of them all – basically a sprint, but one in which the sprinter has to also focus on tactics and conserving energy during a 40-some-second trip around the track.
Van Niekerk didn’t worry much about that last part.
Running out of lane six, he had already made up the lag to the runner on his right, Luguelin Santos, after the first 50 metres. And by the time Van Niekerk hit the straightaway, there was a bathtub-sized chunk of daylight between himself and Merritt.
Front-runners like that often fade late, but this one didn’t. Van Niekerk finished in 43.48 seconds, the fourth-best performance of all time. He won by .17 over Merritt, the 29-year-old, two-time world and 2008 Olympic champion, who himself posted a personal best.
Wouldn’t he expect to win the gold medal with that sort of time?
Merritt raised two fingers after the race, happy to have finished second to top off what he called a “rough” season.
To open Thursday evening’s festivities, Van Niekerk will step to the top of the podium to receive his gold medal.
Nobody can say he didn’t work for it.
“It’s what the sport is all about,” Merritt said. “You get to the championships, and you leave it all on the track.”
