Launching the best long jump distance on African soil in Bloemfontein, Olympic silver medallist Luvo Manyonga affirmed his status as one of the most exciting prospects in the event in recent years.
Manyonga produced an impressive sequence of jumps in his season’s opener at the the Athletics SA (ASA) Speed Series meeting which was marred by a suspected faulty electronic timing system.
Manyonga opened with an impressive effort of 8.37m and followed it up with a sequence of, 8.27, 8.39m, no jump before landing the massive 8.46m.
He overstepped the plasticine by two centimetres on his final jump which Manyonga said measured 8.72m.
Manyonga won the 2016 Olympic silver medal with a best effort of 8.37m before getting within two centimetres of Khotso Mokoena’s national record of 8.50m at the Brussles Diamond League meeting.
“I’m expecting an SA record this season and maybe a gold medal at the world champs,” Manyonga said.
“This gives me the confidence to keep on pushing in training.
“We are pushing very hard this year and are fixing all the mistakes from last year so we very positive.”
The dubious timing system robbed junior sprinting sensation Gift Leotlela of some of his thunder after he beat Olympic champion and 400m world record holder Wayde van Niekerk in the 100m.
Electronic results were not recorded for this race with Leotlela clocking a hand-timed 10 seconds with Van Niekerk and Emile Erasmus given a time of 10.10secs.
Suspect times in the sprint and hurdle events overshadowed performances on the night as Personal Bests fell, left, right, and centre.
Although ASA said all results would remain official it was clear something was amiss with the timing system.
According to the electronic timing 31-year-old Ruan de Vries smashed his PB and broke the national 110m hurdles record with a time of 13.23 seconds.
He slashed his PB by 0.36secs breaking Olympic finalist Lehann Fourie’s previous South African record of 13.24secs.
Junior Mkhatini, who finished second behind De Vries seemingly improved his lifetime best by almost three quarters of a second.
Both Mkhatini and De Vries’ times qualify them for the world championships.
ASA president Aleck Skhosana said there was no reason to doubt the veracity of the times: "I've been told by the technical people the times were fine earlier on (until the glitch with the 100m A-race),"
Widely respected athletics statistics website Tilastopaja have the results listed as 'doubtful timing'.
Although Skhosana said the times need to be ratified by the technical officials he saw no reason not to accept it.
"The times become official as soon as there is electronic timing, if there was a problem the hand-times would be official."