Rene Kalmer will be hoping to make it a case of “Sweet 16″ at Tuesday night’s Yellow Pages Series track and field meeting at Coetzenburg, Stellenbosch, and qualify as the 16th South African athlete to post a Commonwealth Games-qualifying performance, for the Games in New Delhi, India later this year.

Kalmer goes off in the 1500 metres at the meeting which is set to get underway at 6.30pm, and she’ll be gunning for a target of 4min 8.4 seconds, to put her name in the Commonwealth selection hat, subject to SASCOC’s qualification criteria.

But the former school teacher’s quest, despite showing superb early season form, has been made that much harder on two fronts, and has allegedly roped in the services of Juanee Cilliers, an established pacemaker on the international circuit, to take her through the 800m mark in around 2:10.

But it seems that has now fallen through although 800m champion Mapaseka Makhanya’s presence in the field should still ensure a good pace. The more worrying factor, and always a potential problem at the picturesque Coetzenburg oval, is the wind.

Weather reports predict a south-easter of around the 45km/h mark this evening and that could blow all qualifying chances right out of the window.
“Having Mapaseka in the race is great because she is in good form,” said Kalmer, who recently won the 1500 and 5000m events at the nationals in Durban. “I missed out on the qualifying mark by 0.2 of a second in Durban last weekend, and am determined to get it right at Coetzenburg.”

Women Commonwealth qualifers this far in the season are Estie Wittstock (400m), Elizna Naude (discus), Sunette Viljoen (javelin), Justine Robbeson (javelin), Tebogo Masehla (3000m steeplechase) and Myrette Filmalter (3000m steeplechase).

The top female performance at the event is set to pocket R15,000 courtesy of the Yellow Pages Athlete of the Meet competition.

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