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Botswana winning the men’s 4X400m relay at the World Championships.
South Africa’s men’s 4 by 400 relay team ended the country’s 8-year medal drought at the Athletics World Championships after claiming bronze in the final in Tokyo Japan. The team of Lythe Pillay, Udeme Okon, Wayde van Niekerk and Zakhiti Nene was in a fierce battle to the end with eventual winners Botswana and silver medalists USA.
Just before the race started the heavens above Tokyo opened up, which made conditions for handovers in relay even more challenging.
Botswana and the USA were the outright favorites and set the pace from the beginning while South Africa kept a close eye on them.
On the final leg Zakhiti Nene narrowed the gap and it came down to a photo finish.
Botswana became the first African winner of the event in a time of 2-minutes 57. 76 seconds.
The USA and South Africa were given the same time of 2-minutes 57.83 seconds and the USA just clinched 2nd place by a few thousands of a second. It was South Africa’s first medal since the 2017 Athletics World Championships.
Earlier, the men’s 4 by 100-meter team failed to qualify for the final after getting a 2nd opportunity to do so.
On Saturday, the team didn’t finish their semi-final after a collision and World Athletics allowed them to run on their own this morning to try again. Their time this morning, however, was not good enough to go through.
