SA Rocks

This is possibly one of the most entertaining videos that I’ve seen in ages from South Africa.

The video depicts a Springbok fan going through the touring bus of Bokke trophies acquired and held by the Boks right now.

Fantastic. Truly.

Thanks to Pienaar for sending this one on!

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Els claims his first victory in two years and this after finishing a tied 67th place at the Honda Classic last week.

This shows the class of the man and the handle he has on his practical game and mental abilities.

From SuperSport:

“I found something just before dark and I couldn’t wait to get out here and try it. I kept working on it and basically by Thursday I started getting a bit of an idea,” he said.

He put the idea into practice and on Sunday the 40-year-old South African claimed his first tour win in two years in the WGC-CA Championship at Doral.

Els’s last victory, at the Honda two years ago, ended a four year barren spell for him at US tour events but while he talked up his chances then, this time he is striking a considered tone.

“I said a bit too much last time I won,” Els said after he beat compatriot Charl Schwartzel by four strokes on Sunday.

“I was a bit too cocky. I want to just enjoy this one. This took so much work to win.

“A lot of people have said that the older you get, the tougher it becomes to win and that’s very true.

“I’m 40 years old and it feels like in my twenties I had so many chances and I didn’t quite take them,” he said.

Source – Supersport

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Great to see Charl Schwartzel coming together to win the almost R11m first prize.

Also – congratulations to a friend of mine, Thomas Aiken for placing second to start the year off as well as he ended 2009. Another South African placed 3rd: Jbe’ Kruger. That makes it an SA 1st/2nd/3rd finish. Lovely.

Here’s the list of placings:

LEADERBOARD

272 – Charl Schwartzel 67 70 68 67

273 – Thomas Aiken 67 67 69 70

274 – Jbe’ Kruger 69 68 67 70

275 – Rick Kulacz (AUS) 72 69 67 67

275 – James Morrison (ENG) 68 70 69 68

275 – Chris Swanepoel 71 68 68 68

275 – Trevor Fisher Jnr 66 66 71 72

276 – Branden Grace 70 70 70 66

276 – James Kingston 68 69 71 68

276 – Michiel Bothma 69 69 70 68

276 – Pelle Edberg (SWE) 69 68 70 69

276 – Miles Tunnicliff (ENG) 68 71 67 70

source

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I was fortunate enough to receive photos of the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban over email.

I managed to find a source for the photographs. Credit goes to Lefty Shivambu for the all of the photos.

Have a look for yourself.

Forget Greenpoint, Port Elizabeth or any other stadium, this one simply blows my mind.

images: Karen Lotter

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RUGBY

CRICKET

What a fantastic achievement. South Africa is currently the number one country in Test Cricket Ranking and the Rugby Union Rankings. What a sight! What an achievement and what a time to do it.

Coupled with Caster Semenya’s victory and the 2010 World Cup coming to SA, the Gautrain and tourism pumping, South Africa is looking good right now I’d say!

As of Monday 24 August, South Africa is top of the world Test cricket rankings (by virtue of England beating Australia). Not only that, we’re also top of the world One-Day International cricket ranking as well as being the number one ranked Rugby Union country in the world. So we are top of both the cricket and rugby rankings at the same time!

I cannot remember when any country last managed this feat. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that it MAY have been Australia in 1999, because they won the Rugby World Cup that year and have been top of the cricket rankings for about the last 15 years or so. England topped the rugby rankings briefly in 2003 but they’ve not been number one at cricket for many years now. New Zealand have regularly been rugby’s number one, but never in history have they enjoyed this status at cricket. Even Australia’s feat in 1999 may not match what we’ve done, because winning the Rugby World Cup does not automatically make you the number one team (although it obviously helps a lot).

All we need now is for Soccer to follow suit …

Thanks to Paul for his nudge, reminder and research! Good work.

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Sadly the two aren’t related. Caster captured gold at the IAAF World Championship but it was the IAAF’s gender investigation of Caster Semenya that has captured headlines.

It’s been a few days since Caster took the gold and I’ve held off on blogging about it for various reasons. Firstly people initially thought it humorous what was happening to Semenya, but I wasn’t convinced. Secondly I was trying to suss out the situation and finally I wanted to congratulate Semenya without the hype of her gender case being prominent.

So here’s to Caster Semenya, the First Lady of Sport in South Africa – as one newspaper rightfully put it.

Many articles and opinions are being written about Semenya, her gold medal, her rise to the forefront of her field and, of course, her gender. But let me say that I am proud to say that Caster Semenya is South African and brought us a gold medal this year. She deserves praise for this act.

But let me also make it clear that I was once a sprinter of short and medium distances (100m, 200m, 400m and relays) and I find it very difficult to understand a 6 second shave off her previous times to take her to the leading time in the 800m race this year. All this in a very short period of time.

I do have an alternate thought to those who jumped to the gender issue; what if Semenya, for the first time in her gifted life, actually received proper training this year. Not from a school teacher or a regional coach but from a professional. I firmly believe that it is within the realm of possibility that a person can take 6 seconds of their time if their initial time was nowhere near one that proper training can entice.

Personally I will be absolutely dumbfounded if Semenya turns out to be male. In fact I am almost certainly willing to say that She, is a She. But if it happens, it happens and we can try to cross that bridge when it comes tumbling down.

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I blogged about the need for 15000 volunteers to come forward for the 2010 Football World Cup. It seems as thought people in SA and around the world are not shy to lend a hand.

SouthAfrica.info reports that over 11000 volunteers have already come forward and offered their services from all across the globe. That’s impressive if you ask me.

Just days after opening its 2010 Fifa World Cup volunteer programme, South Africa has already received more than 11 000 volunteer applications from the country, the continent and the rest of the world.

Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the 2010 World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC), told reporters after a meeting in Johannesburg last week that around 1 100 of these were from the rest of Africa and 1 500 from overseas.

“South Africans and other countries have responded very well to the programme, and we expect more applications before the closing date [31 August],” Jordaan said.

“This … clearly shows that people are looking forward to the event in which volunteers are significantly important. We are very impressed with the current number of applications.”

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Two South Africans are flying around the world. Now that doesn’t sound like such a great plan in today’s day and age. Hell, everyone knows they can hop on a plane and make a few stops and be around the world. The site is called Airplane Factory. And it’s an interesting read let me tell you.

Yet this is different:

Mike and James, proud owners of The Airplane Factory, are flying the production prototype Sling from Johannesburg, South Africa, to the Oshkosh Airventure Airshow, Wisconsin USA, in July this year. They will return to Johannesburg by continuing their journey west, circumnavigating the globe en route. The journey, including 6 days in Oshkosh, is planned to take place over approximately one calendar month, commencing on 18 July and returning on 22 August 2009.

Now, Mr Jason Bagley alerted me to this via twitter, one of the pilots is actually his Uncle, which I think is pretty nifty.

Where are they now?

Mike & James are presently in Conakry, Guinea.
WEATHER: Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. Low around 24°C / 75°F. Winds SW at 8-16km/h / 5-10mph. Chance of rain 40%.
EXPECTED DEPARTURE: The next leg across the Atlantic will be Wednesday evening, the 22nd July 2009. We will advise as soon as we have the expected time of departure.

You can show your support on the site too, if you have any way of possibly helping them out or assisting them with plans of any sort then head over to the site for more info on how to help.

Be sure to head over to the Routes area of the site and follow their progress. It seems as though they’ve just completed the 3rd leg and are on to the fourth leg of the trip tomorrow. What an extraordinary thing to be doing. I am incredibly impressed with these two phenomenal gentlemen, and somewhat jealous!

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Found this video over at Zoopy.

Very cool to see the Durban 2010 stadium looking as good as it does. Everyone keeps talking about the Greenpoint stadium but I personally LOVE the Durban stadium. Have a look:

Durban 2010 timelapse.

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In spite of a dismal looking record in the Confederation Cup (One win in the whole tournament), Bafana Bafana under the leadership of Joel Santana proved that they have what it takes to stand up to the top football nations in the world and give them stick.

And stick is exactly what Spain and Brazil received (Spain twice).

Sadly Bafana was not rewarded with a victory in the final stages of the tournament and managed to finish 4th in the tournament behind Brazil, USA and Spain.

However I am still proud to say that it took 3 miracle goals to beat bafana in the 3rd/4th play-off and one of the best freekicks I’ve seen by Brazil to take us out of the semi-final.

Mphela played a magical game in the 3rd/4th play-off and put through one of the best freekicks under pressure in the final movement of a football match to take the game in to extra time (which we then lost).

Bafana has a good platform to start working from for the 2010 world cup coming our way next year. We are in a great position to look at how we played against 2 of the top 5 teams in the world of football. Joel Santana deserved a win, but let’s be honest he’s finally made South Africa look like a team, play like a team and become supported like a national team by a nation.

Well done to them all.

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