In a world of fast times and speed, Ans Botha’s calm is a breath of fresh air.
With her silky white hair and frequent references to Tannie – Afrikaans for auntie – around the room, she stands out easily. And her pearls of wisdom speak of the abundance of her experience.
A sprinter and a long jumper in her younger days, Tannie Ans saw potential in her daughter, Herma, but couldn’t find a good enough coach. Armed with a book on athletics coaching, she took matters into her own hands. Those were the late sixties. Half a century later, the 77-year-old and her protégés are still making waves in the world of athletics.
Just two years ago she received the IAAF Award for Coaching Achievement. It was only a few days after her most famous protégé, 400m World and Olympic champion Wayde van Niekerk, had picked up an ACL injury while playing a celebrity touch rugby match. “I was mad,” Botha had then told the IAAF website.
Van Niekerk, the 400m world record holder, has since had to push back his full-fledged competitive return, and while his participation in the next month’s IAAF World Athletics Championship in Doha is under the cloud, he is targeting the Olympics next year in Tokyo, Japan.
“At this stage it really is unsure because we are still awaiting results of the latest tests and MRIs that have been done. I can’t say,” Botha says on the sidelines of an event at the South African Embassy in the Qatari capital yesterday.
Van Niekerk, the first man in history to go sub-10, sub-20, sub-31 and sub-44 seconds in 100m, 200m, 300m and the 400m events respectively, has been undergoing treatment at Qatar’s state-of-the-art orthopaedic and sports medicine hospital, Aspetar.
“It’s really, really, really, really heartbreaking,” she says, before her calmness and experience kicks in.
“But on the other hand, my belief is something like this doesn’t happen for nothing. Wayde and I talked about this a lot. And we see it as something which had to be happen to make both of us mentally stronger.”
The coach from Namibia, who met Van Niekerk at the Free State University in Bloemfontein, South Africa, talks about how the athlete, the manager and she had pondered over taking a break in 2018.
“Beijing World Championships (400m gold), Rio (400m gold in world record time), the 2017 World Championships double (400m gold, 200m silver), Wayde was mentally absolutely drained,” she says.
“2018 didn’t have any big competitions, barring Commonwealth Games, and we thought about taking him off and give him a gap year, just to build his strength and have a good rest mentally.
“But we didn’t have to decide, it was decided for us,” she says, referring to the injury in late 2017.
Needless to say that the injury must have been a tough time for Van Niekerk, but for Botha, a mother figure in the athlete’s life, it was just as difficult.
“As a mother figure, his pain is your pain, his disappointments are your disappointments. On the other hand I also have to be strong and positive, and not allow my pain that I feel for him to be carried over on to him. I have to be strong for him, and be there for him,” she says.
The 27-year-old’s absence has seen the rise of American Michael Norman, who ran an indoor world record 44.52 seconds in March last year. The World Championships in Doha would have seen a first ever head-to-head between the two.
But Botha is not paying much attention.
“You don’t want to run your opponent’s race. You want to run your own race,” she says.
“We do our thing; we focus on what we have to do and what our goals are, and you forget about the rest.”
And focus she does. She has this innate ability to keep her maternal instincts off the track when she is coaching her wards, often around 30 odd of them.
“(On the track) I don’t allow anything, no cell phones, for instance; it has to be discipline. They need to work and my athletes also know that. Off the track, and after hours, I am there for anything that they need or anything that they may want to talk about or whatever. But on the track it’s discipline and work,” she says.
And it shows.
South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk (second from left), his coach Ans Botha (third from right) and South Africa’s ambassador to Qatar Faizel Moosa (second from right) at an event at the South African embassy yesterday. PICTURES: Ram Chand
