CAPE TOWN: Former world 800 metre champion Caster Semenya is likely to miss next month’s world championships in Moscow after being left off South Africa’s provisional list of 30 athletes released yesterday.
Semenya, who won the world title in 2009 and ran second two years later, before grabbing the silver medal at the London Olympics, clocked a slow time in her first competitive race in over a year on Wednesday.
The 22-year-old would ordinarily be considered a good bet for a medal, but a knee injury that has plagued her since the Olympics and a pedestrian 800 metres win in a time of 2:06.58 in Finland have cast doubts over her readiness for Moscow.
Semenya would need to run 2:00.00 or quicker by July 29 to qualify for the championships, but her agent, Jukka Harkonen, told reporters earlier in the week that she had no more races lined up before the deadline.
The provisional South African list consists of 22 track and field athletes, six marathon runners and two race walkers.
Meanwhile, Algeria’s Olympic 1500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi has become the latest big name to withdraw from the world athletics championships after failing to recover from a viral infection, the country’s El Watan newspaper reported yesterday.
The 25-year-old had was taken ill in Ethiopia in January and has struggled since then, managing only an 11th-placed finish in a Diamond League mile race at Eugene in the United States on June 1 in a rare outing. REUTERS
