If you managed to stay awake until just shy of 11PM last night, you would have been treated to a sprinting spectacle.

Things didn’t go exactly to plan for our superstar, Wayde van Niekerk, but he did manage to take silver in the men’s 200m final.

No Usain, so gold was there for the taking, but he was pipped into second place – by .02 of a second, 1/50th of a second – by Turk Ramil Guliyev.

No commentary on this one, but you’ll get some good slow-motion replays of the final push for the line. It looked like Wayde had it wrapped up with around 50m to go, but in the end he will have to be happy with second.

Told you it was tight.

So what’s all this about beef with a sprinter from Botswana? Well, it turns out Isaac Makwala is pretty upset about being excluded from the men’s 400m final, where van Niekerk claimed gold, because of claims he was infected with the contagious norovirus:

When speaking to the BBC after Van Niekerk’s 400m victory, [head of medical services at London 2017, Pamela] Venning insisted that letting Makwala race would “risk many, many, many more athletes not competing” because of the “very infectious and very virulent” nature of the virus. As she told the BBC’s panel: “The history from this gentleman is very clear he had symptoms similar to all the other athletes classified as having this gastrointestinal disease.”

Makwala was fuming in the wake of being denied his shot in the 400m final, and former sprinter Michael Johsnon went as far as hinting at an IAAF conspiracy to keep Makwala from beating Van Niekerk.

Makwala himself expressed similar sentiments, with some outlets reporting that he suggested Wayde played a part of the conspiracy, which made their showdown in last night’s 200m final even spicier.

Makwala finishing well outside of the medals, and after the race Wayde wasn’t very impressed by the accusations:

The usually calm Van Niekerk was visibly tearful and angry…He dismissed Makwala’s assertion that athletics’ world governing body the IAAF had unfairly quarantined him with a sickness bug to pave the way for Van Niekerk to take 400m gold.

“It really did upset me a bit because I have always shown him massive respect and for him to mention my name in something fishy, as an IAAF favourite is unfair,” said Van Niekerk, “I’ve been putting out great performances for the last two years now so I think I deserve way more respect from my competitors. I want to compete and I’m not here to make friends, so I learned a great lesson, to focus on myself and not letting negative things affect me.”

Yes man, don’t take that kak lying down.

The man from Botswana is actually a very likeable character, and it’s a pity that he would cast aspersions on Wayde’s gold.

He will always have his epic 200m solo qualifying race to look back on though, his push-ups at the end proving that the virus (or lack thereof) wouldn’t hold him back:

[sources:guardian&guardian]