Wayde van Niekerk and Tannie Ans Botha, the
Kovsie sprint coach, have been travelling the
road together as athlete and coach for the past
four years.
Photo: Johan Roux

After Wayde van Niekerk’s gold medal and new world record at the Rio Olympic Games, his coach, Ans Botha, hopes to prepare more Kovsie athletes for world championships and for the Olympics.

The 74-year-old Tannie Ans, as she is known by all, has been involved with Kovsie athletics and especially with sprinters since 1990. She also serves as the club’s manager.

Had sights set on world record

“One should have dreams, and goals to go with it. Some of my athletes have the potential to qualify for the 2020 Olympics, but I prefer not to name them at this stage,” she said.

According to her, they [Van Niekerk and herself] started talking about a possible new world record a year before the Olympics.

“Following last year’s World Championship (which Wayde won in a time of 43.48?s) we knew that we could, apart from the Olympics, start working towards a new record if we wanted to win gold. This was our goal since the start of the season.”

Her athlete managed to improve the record from 43,18 to 43,02.

Pleasure to coach Van Niekerk

Although she has been involved in coaching since 1968, it was only during the past year that she really started receiving recognition for her work in athletics.

Tannie Ans has been coaching Van Niekerk, the golden boy from the Free State, since 2012, and she advised him at the time to leave sprints and rather focus on the 400 m. This was after he constantly suffered from a hamstring injury.

“It is such a pleasure to work with Wayde; he is so dedicated.”