Wayde van Niekerk begins the defence of his Olympic 400m crown at the Tokyo Games on Sunday insisting he is fit enough to slug it out for three full rounds.
Van Niekerk ran three 400m races last season and this year he’s done two‚ qualifying for Tokyo with his 44.56 effort on June 19 that earned him second place in Madrid‚ and then a 44.87 that gave him the win in Lucerne at the end of the month.
Van Niekerk has looked sharp in some 200m races this year‚ but in both 400m outings he looked a little sluggish on the home straight‚ suggesting he needed to sharpen his fitness. He is 10th on the world list for 2021 and is expected to face tough competition from reigning world champion Steve Gardiner of the Bahamas‚ Americans Michael Cherry and Michael Norman‚ Colombia’s Anthony Zambrano and 2012 Olympic champion Kirani James of Grenada.
Van Niekerk’s 2020 campaign in Europe was shortened after he contracted the coronavirus soon after arriving there‚ and this year he also struggled with what he termed “inconsistency with my body now and then”. Van Niekerk‚ who moved to the US to switch coaches earlier this year‚ pulled up in a 200m race in Boston while experiencing a tightness in his hip and withdrew just before a 400m race in Europe early this month after feeling a stiffness in his lower back. That translates into two of his last four scheduled races.
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