Friday, 13th April 2007 at 2:22 pm

Australian menace in Durban waters

A largely dismal year for Australia in the Super 14 has brought some cheer to South Africa, but most of that dissipated in the pool defeat to Ricky Ponting’s crew in the Caribbean. And now another Australian has added her name to the list of sportspeople inflicting misery on South Africans: swimmer Sophie Edington.

The lone Australian in the pool in Durban this week at the Telkom National Swimming Championships has already picked up two gold medals, and looks poised for at least one more. Famous for wearing a bikini from time to time when she races (sadly, nothing so far this week), the Australian has stolen a fair share of the thunder at King’s Park. She hasn’t produced the performance of the week, though; and neither has Gerhard Zandberg, despite a sensational 50 metre freestyle win over Ryk Neethling.

No, the performance that had the crowd cheering the loudest was the slowest of the night - and easily the most inspirational. Adri Visser, swimming in the mixed disability 100 metres butterfly, turned as the first competitors had finished the race, and for the last 30 metres, she was the only one still racing. But considering that Adri has just one leg - the other, and both arms, are missing to above the joint - simply getting into the water represented a remarkable act of courage, let alone taking on a hundred metres of butterfly.

And so the biggest cheer of the night rose when Adri finally touched home - and in a final act of defiance to her disability, insisted on hauling herself out of the pool. And the race had the perfect ending, for while she may have finished last in the heat, times are calculated as a percentage of world record of a particularly disability category, and half an hour after her swim, Adri Visser had a gold medal round her neck, and the defining story of this year’s Nationals.