Van der Burgh faces Scottish threat
Team SA should garner a further three medals in the course of the second day.
Van der Burgh, who is 26, did what was required to progress to tonight’s semi-finals, but having viewed yesterday’s 200m breaststroke, has added Scotland’s Ross Murdoch as a danger for the final.
Murdoch clocked 1:00.63 in the third heat this morning to rank second overall behind England’s Adam Peaty who took the final heat in a new Games record of 59.47, a full second off van der Burgh’s world mark.
On Thursday the 20-year-old Scot broke the Games record in the 200m with a 2:08.78 and with the emotional boost of raucous home crowd support is certainly someone Van der Burgh will want to keep in sight.
“I’m just progressing through the heats to the semi – then to the final and then its all in the mind,” said the South African who will also be competing in the 50m breaststroke and the 4x100m medley elay. “I watched the 200m last night. That was a good race, (by Murdoch), I definitely have to watch out for him in the final.”
Van der Burgh feels the team can repeat their silver from Delhi in the medley relay, although there are some uncertainty over who will handle the backstroke leg.
“We’ve always been racing for silver. If we can repeat Delhi the team will be ecstatic,” Van der Burgh said.
The swimmers faced the disappointment of Myles Brown failing to make the final of the 400m free, while Karen Prinsloo became another victim of the flu virus that hit South Africa in the last few weeks.
“Everyone seems to have been hit. I came back from Europe and had two sets of anti-biotics, but everyone’s over it and we just getting stronger. It’s always difficult to regain momentum when you have a bad start. Everyone (in the team), is just trying to reset. Chad and Roland have a really good chance (of medals) in the 50m (butterfly) tonight which will lift moral and we’ll get going again like normal. You cant dwell on the negative – its not going to change anything now,” Van der Burgh added.
It was the flu virus that saw Chad le Clos reluctantly withdraw from the 400 individual medley as he lost too much time from training leaving, Sebastien Rousseau as the sole South African. Rousseau ranked sixth after leading his heat through to 50m into the breaststroke. Scot, Danial Wallace, then took control and pushed for home in the freestyle setting a new Games record of 4:11.04, over two seconds inside the mark set by Le Clos in Delhi.
Rousseau is a potential for a podium, but looked to lack some of the confidence that would take him into the top three.
The morning swim was rounded off by the shadow 4x100 freestyle relay, were SA ended third behind Australia and England in 3:19.97. SA will be in lane six in tonght's final, when they are expected to be bolstered by Roland Schoeman and Chad le Clos. this should give Team SA their third medal of the night.
Others to progress through to the next rounds included Trudi Maree in the 50m freestyle and Jessica-Ashley Cooper, who ranked 12th in the 100m backstroke.
(File Photo:Gallo Images)
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