North vs South rivalry continues

Bellville Track

Gauteng North are currently leading the points standing after the first Yellow Pages Interprovincial Meeting in Germiston on Saturday 25 February. With the second and final leg in Bellville on 3 March, Athletics Gauteng North will be looking to defend their title from 2011 and to pocket the R100 000 going to the winning province.

It was the women’s team of Gauteng North who led the way, amassing a total of 12370 points after some solid performances by their sprinters. Cherese Jones and Carina Horn taking 1 and 2 in the 100m and Wenda Theron bagging valuable points in the 400mh and 400m flat.

Burger Lamprechts led the way for the men when qualified for the World Indoor Championships with a put of 20.12m to win the Shot Put competition and contributing 1128 points to the 12194 tally the province amassed on Saturday.

WP, the hosts for the second leg of the Yellow Pages Interprovincial trail AGN by 1189 points. Had the men’s 4x100m relay team finished the race, the gap could have been a lot closer, or the roles even reversed.

Western Province will be looking to the men’s relay team to make up their mistake in front of their home crowd and the women’s relay squad will want to repeat their victory from Saturday when the quartet of Samantha Pretorius, Sioban Loots, Stacey Welsh and Bernice Roman clocked 47.60sec to the 47.89sec of Athletics Central North West.

The host province will also be hoping that Africa Junior Champion, Rocco van Rooyen will repeat his performance from Germiston where he won the javelin throw in 69.04m.

Young Taariq Solomons enters the men’s WP team and will be running in the 400mh. Solomons best of 51.39sec is worth 1059 points to the host province. This early in the season though it is unlikely he will be close to that form.

WP will be looking to 400mh star Cornel Fredericks to bring back points in the flat 400m. Fredericks will only start racing his specialist event later in the season. His best for the 400m flat is 46.95sec run in Jämsä, Finland on 4 Jul 2010, however since then he has brought his 400mh time down to 48.14sec from the 48.79 in 2010 and will have developed his leg speed quite dramatically.

After the first leg of the Yellow Pages Interprovincial in Germiston on Saturday 25 February, the point’s standings are as follows.

The Second Yellow Pages Interprovincial in Bellville gets under way at 13h00 with tickets sold at R20 for adults and R10 for children.