Tuesday, 11th September 2007 at 11:28 am

Bryan Habana walks on water

On the back of his explosive start to the Rugby World Cup - four blistering tries, with a fifth only ruled out because of a needless forward pass - Bryan Habana is already favourite to be top try-scorer at the tournament. Feverpitcher has already put next month’s rent on the winger to top the charts; by way of encouragement, here’s a selection of trivia about Habana you probably didn’t know…

• At the age of three, Bryan Habana almost burnt down his house, after the carpet caught fire when he took off for a mad dash across the living room. The Habana household subsequently had to be fitted with fireproof flooring.
• Bryan Habana was given a pet cheetah at the age of five. After a month the cheetah gave up chasing its new owner, and was checked in to animal therapy with manic depression and low self-esteem.
• In standard seven, Bryan Habana became the first person in athletic history to lap the entire field in a 400 metres race.
• Eskom paid Bryan Habana R1-million to run on a treadmill connected to a generator for ten minutes, thus generating enough power to fend off Cape Town’s power blackouts for an entire winter.
• Bryan Habana spends his off-season testing with Ferrari. Two years ago, one of the cars actually kept up. Breifly.
• On a promotional flight from London to New York aboard Concorde, Bryan Habana ran from one end of the ‘plane to the other in 1.92 seconds; during that time, the Concorde covered 3.2 miles. Bryan Habana was thus travelling at 5 760 miles an hour, or as he described it to the media later, “jogging”.
• In World War II, British cryptographers made nearly 60 000 interceptions. Bryan Habana averages that in a season.
• Bryan Habana is the only person on earth to have made the journey from the V&A Waterfront to Robben Island on foot.

All statistics researched and presented exclusively by Feverpitcher.