Jacques Freitag: world champion
Brad Morgan
27 August 2003
South Africans knew how good he was, but outside of a win in the Golden League, with an impressive 2.35 metre clearance in Rome, high jumper Jacques Freitag wasn’t that well known to athletics fans around the world. He is now.
It’s hard to miss him. At 2.04-metres tall the athlete from Pretoria catches the eye, and when he is in high jump action he provides eye-riveting action.
In Paris, sharing a stage with the world’s best athletes at the World Athletics Championships, he delivered the goods with a superb performance in what is sure to be a brilliant career. Freitag was the only athlete who managed to clear 2.35 metres, leaving world number one Stefan Holm trailing in his wake, three centimetres adrift in second place, to secure gold for South Africa.
He had an early miss at 2.25 metres, but was then perfect until he knocked the bar down on his first attempt at 2.35 metres, where he had been joined by Holm and Canadian athlete Mark
Boswell. Neither managed to go clear at that height, but Freitag did it at the second attempt to win the world title.
What is remarkable about his win is that he could well have been out of action the entire 2003 season had he listened to his doctor. In his first European meeting of 2002, Freitag tore the ligaments in his ankle in wet conditions. Medical advice was that he would need two years to recover, but he would have none of that, shortening his recovery period to just eight months. Look who’s smiling now.
'I'm on top of the world'
Speaking after his win, Freitag proclaimed: "I am on top of the world". Certainly, for an instant, he was up there looking down on the rest of us.
The young Pretoria athlete wasn’t the only South African to catch the eye on the third day of competition at the World Championships. Sprinter Sherwin Vries turned in some fine times to qualify for the semi-finals of the 100 metres, clocking 10.20 and then
10.18.
Unfortunately, he didn’t appear to be properly set in the semi-final as the starter’s pistol went off, and a bad start in such a short, sharp race cannot easily be overcome. The 23-year SA champion was way off his previous two times, finishing in 10.41 and thus missing out on the final, but it had been a good showing from him nonetheless.
Just on the point of "I told you so" (who doesn't love to say that?). Take a look at the World Championship preview I wrote recently. In that piece you will find the following: A real dark horse challenger for a world title is Cloete’s fellow high jumper, Jacques Freitag … Maybe some of my other predictions will come true as the rest of the South African team try to emulate the former world youth champion, now world champion.
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