Team South Africa continued to show impressive form at the World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore on Friday.
Nathan Hendricks just missed out on a medal in the S13 400m freestyle for visually impaired swimmers, finishing fourth in 4 minutes 15.28 seconds. Gold was claimed by Russian Egor Shchitkovskii in a time of 4:02.14.
“Last night I swam the 50 free so it was quite a tight turnaround to the 400 free this morning, being the first event,” he explained afterwards. “So this morning was me just trying to make certain I made the final, and then in the final it was just go guns blazing and see how I do. I left everything in the pool, so I was very chuffed with this race.”
As for the position he finished, Hendricks added: “I was quite chuffed with the placing, coming fourth. I was quite happy with that. Time-wise, I’m OK with it, I could do a lot better but now I know what I can work on, especially more into the swim and the turns because the turns weren’t too great, but I can definitely work on those and get better.”
NEW AFRICAN RECORD
Meanwhile, after already securing three medals at these championships, Christian Sadie once again went quicker than ever before, setting a new African record in the S7 50m freestyle. The 27-year-old finished in a time of 28.70 seconds to finish fifth in the final, with the gold once again going to Ukrainian Andrii Trusov in 27.98 seconds.
“Today went quite well overall. The 50 free is always a fun one. I think it’s just a splash and dash and small technical things need to go right, and execution needs to be good,” said Sadie.
“I think in the morning, the swimming was really good, but there were some small technical things that I got really wrong,” he added.
“It was a good time, but for what I knew I should have been doing, maybe not as great as we could have had. But in the evening we fixed up all of those things. The technical stuff was a lot better and execution was also a lot better, so overall I feel like it was really good in the morning and we were able to improve in the evening as well.”
After also progressing through their morning heats of the S13 400m freestyle, Alani Ferreira finished seventh in the final in 4 minutes 56.05 seconds, while Danika Vyncke was eighth in the same race in 5:05.55.
The World Para Swimming Championships in Singapore come to an end on Saturday, 27 September.