Mzansi’s 200m record holder with a personal best of 19.69 seconds, Clarence Munyai, is one of the favourites to win the national title at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town at the SA Senior Track and Field Championships starting on Thursday to Saturday.
Munyai is coached by Warner Prinsloo, a renowned sprinting coach, at the High-Performance Centre at the University of Pretoria.
He will take on his friend and sprint rival and SA 100m record-holder with a personal best of 9.84 seconds, Akani Simbine, in this epic sprint battle in the Mother City.
Munyai has been troubled by injuries and he hopes to be injury-free this season.
He goes into the national championships high on confidence after upsetting Botswana superstar and multi Olympian Isaac Makwala in the 200m battle in Germiston on Wednesday night. He is eyeing a top-two finish in the 100m and 200m finals.
“It’s about managing your races correctly and not over-racing because if you do that, you’re not going to be able to perform,” Munyai said after his dashing performance in Germiston.
“There’s a lot of events: the African Championships, the Commonwealth Games and the World Champs, you must pick the races correctly and see how it goes,” he said.
“SA athletics is in good space, the younger ones are running good times and sub-10 seconds and I am happy for the future of SA athletics, it’s looking good and it will be interesting how the season shapes up.
“Akani’s race was very fast and they ran 9.98 and I cannot wait to see what happens next. As long as you make it to the finals, anything can happen. I am taking it one race at a time and won’t speak about the World Champs right now because they are still very far. We will see what happens when we get closer to the time. The coach will tell me what we need to do for now,” he said.
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