The 27-year-old is one of the big names in Africa’s squad at the competition and now holds the national record in the 400m, 800m, 1 000m, as well as the 1 500m, according to thesouthafrican.com website. Caster Semenya showed off her versatility and underlined her class once more as she shattered yet another South African record, this time in the women’s 400m at the IAAF Continental Cup in Ostrava, the Czech Republic on Saturday.
She did this in elegant style, becoming the first South African woman to dip under 50 seconds in a single lap, beating Heide Seyerling’s 18-year-old record time of 50.05. Semenya had however registered a time below 50 seconds earlier this year at the recent African Championships in Asaba, Nigeria – but her time of 49.96 was not ratified due to the poor state of the pitch.
This time around she bettered that feat, completing the lap in 49.62 coming in second behind Salwa Eid Naser of the Asia-pacific team, just a week after bettering the South African record in the rarely run 100m at the International Stadionfest in Berlin.
Another South African who grabbed top honours at the event was Ruswahl Samaai, who’s long jump of 8.16m saw him take first place for Team Africa.
Source: Daily Sun
