Last eight weeks ago, the 17-year-old Namibia Beatrice Masilingi athlete blew an international field away to win a 400m race in a stunning time of 50.99s which saw her breaking the Namibia 400m record.
But still beaming in that euphoria, yesterday in a beautiful city of Pretoria she dug deeper into to improve the Namibia 400m record to 50.42s.
Elated Masilingi had these to say; “The race wasn’t planned like that at all, we were actually just planning to break the 52-second barrier. I don’t know what happened, but I think the race plan went well. I just hit it off from the beginning and kept going and when I reached the 150m mark I just hit back, so I think the strategy worked very well,” she said.
Her coach Henk Botha was particularly impressed.
“I think it has already changed her life and the telephone has not stopped ringing. I have an arrangement that everyone must talk to me first, because she is still only 17 years old and we don’t want unnecessary people just contacting her,” he said
“I just had a very interesting conversation with the University of Oklahoma which wants to give her a full scholarship and we also got numerous calls from Europe. I even received a call from a radio station in Germany, so the name Beatrice Masilingi is currently knocking on doors,” he added.
“I’m sure she can qualify for the Olympics and I think we will see even better times from her early next year. We are planning to compete in some competitions in Namibia, South Africa or even Australia, and then in the northern hemisphere summer hopefully she will be invited to a Diamond League meeting, while we are also looking at the Continental Cup series. There’s one in Australia in March that we are already busy negotiating about and we hope to compete at a few others, so I’m sure somewhere along the line we will see a decent time to qualify for the Olympics,” he said.
Pretoria (South Africa), 12.12.2020
Women
100m (3.1) Mpontsheng Sekese 11.74
200m (2.7) Beatrice Masilingi 22.71
400m 1 Beatrice Masilingi (nam) (2003) 50.42; 2 Taylon Bieldt 53.64; 3 Kirsten Ahrens 54.97
Women u18
200m -heat 1- (2.4) Kayla La Grange 24.11; -heat 2- (3.8) Mienke Booysen 24.36
400m Christine Mbomba (nam) 53.5
DiscernSport
3 replies on “Namibia Masilingi Hit Another Millstone As She Breaks National Record Again”
Hi Mickey here. I saw Beatrice Masalingi’s name for the first time only this week when I saw she broke the national 100m record. I had no idea she was only 17. Amazing. Perhaps a star sprinter of the future 😉
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I hope she will deliver when it matters most. RSA is a high altitude country and that record should not be taken seriously as such. If she can produce the same performance in other climes, then she is a star for the future.
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That can be very true of 100m or 200m which depend on wind reading for it’s legality, but 400m is different once she keeps her form she will definitely delivered
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