
Coetzé wins South Africa's first gold medal at the World University Games
His winning time of 51.99 seconds is a new African and World Student Record. For now, it is also the fastest time in the world.
It is incredible how Coetzé swam a speedier time every time he dived in. In the heats, his time was 53.34 seconds, and in the semi-finals, it was 52.18 seconds.
There is a good chance that the Tuks swimmer will win more medals later in the later in the Games. The swimming program runs until Wednesday.
His time of 24.50 seconds in the semi-final of the 50m backstroke was the fastest on Sunday, while he also qualified for the final in the 100m freestyle with another fastest semi-final time of 48.30 seconds, which is also a new personal best for him in this event.
Coetzé is a specialist backstroke swimmer, but he makes no secret of the fact that he enjoys swimming the freestyle when the opportunity arises.
He will, unfortunately, not compete in the 200m backstroke as he will also be competing in the World Championships in Singapore, which start this coming weekend.
The time difference between Germany and Singapore is six hours. According to TuksSwimming head coach, Rocco Meiring, Coetzé must have sufficient time to acclimatise. Therefore, he will miss out on competing in the 200 m backstroke, which is one of the last items on the swimming program at the Student Games.
Coetzé is often referred to as a true competitor. Someone who likes to test himself against the best.
'A lot of times when I train, it feels like I'm just an average swimmer. When I race, something happens. I'm different when competing than when training. I like competition and the pressure that comes with it,' he recently explained his onslaught during competitions.
In an interview earlier this year Coetzé was asked about his preferences as a backstroke swimmer and what distance in the pool is his favourite.
'You could say the 200m backstroke is my best event, but I will always compete in the 100 and 50 meters. Remember, I come from a sprint background,' was his reply.
– Another local swimmer from Pretoria, Lara van Niekerk, won the silver medal in the 50m breaststroke on Sunday.
Do you have more information about the story?
Please send us an email to [email protected] or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord's websites: Rekord East
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The South African
12 hours ago
- The South African
Commonwealth Games 2026: One year to go countdown
Wednesday, 23 July marked exactly one year to go until the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. These Games were last held in the Scottish city in 2014. The 2026 Games will feature a radically reduced 10-sport programme, including six fully integrated Para Sports, hosted in four venues. The sports to be represented are: 3×3 Basketball and 3×3 Wheelchair Basketball, Artistic Gymnastics, Athletics and Para Athletics, Bowls and Para Bowls, Boxing, Cycling and Para Cycling, Judo, Netball, Swimming and Para Swimming and Weightlifting and Para Powerlifting. Team SA history at Commonwealth Games Below is a short refresher as to how Team SA has fared at the Commonwealth Games, since returning from isolation in 1994. Chad le Clos' silver medal in the 200m butterfly increased his total at the Commonwealth Games to 18, which is the joint most of any male athlete. The overall record is 20 by Australian swimmer Emma McKeon. Lara van Niekerk was South Africa's most successful athlete in Birmingham, with a gold medal in both the 50m breaststroke and 100m breaststroke. Medals: 7 gold 9 silver 11 bronze. Total 27 These will be remembered as the Games where Tatjana Smith (Schoenmaker) announced her arrival. She won gold in both the 100m and 200m breaststroke and from there went on to win medals in both events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Elsewhere, veterans Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh (swimming) and Akani Simbine (pictured) and Caster Semenya (athletics) also won gold. Medals: 13 gold 11 silver 13 bronze. Total 37 A successful haul of 40 medals – the second largest in the country's Games history – came off the back of 13 gold medals spread across five sports. Leading the way was lawn bowls with five golds, with three each from swimming and one each from judo and rugby sevens. Swimmer Chad le Clos won two golds for the biggest individual return. Medals: 13 gold 10 silver 17 bronze. Total 40 Chad le Clos' gold in the 200m butterfly singled him out as an emerging star and two years later he beat the great Michael Phelps to gold in the London Olympics. Para-swimmer Natalie du Toit won three more gold medals to add to the two each from Melbourne and Manchester and helped ensure that seven of the 12 gold medals at these Games were in the pool. Medals: 12 gold 11 silver 10 bronze. Total 33 The 'Awesome Foursome' of the Athens 2004 Olympics was back, with Gerhard Zandberg replacing Darian Townsend. The 4x100m freestyle quartet beat Australia in a Games record time to win gold, while Roland Schoeman collected three golds in the pool and para-swimmer Natalie du Toit, who was going to become the third amputee ever to qualify for the Olympics two years later, taking two golds. Boxing won its last gold for Team SA at the Games. Medals: 12 gold 13 silver 13 bronze. Total 38 Para-swimmer Natalie du Toit won the first two of what would be seven Commonwealth Games gold in the pool for her. She and Roland Schoeman earned swimming gold, while the other golds came in track and field. One of them was star 800m athlete Mbulaeni Mulaudzi who was later tragically killed in a car accident in 2014. Eleven different sports – including wheelchair table tennis – earned medals for Team SA. Medals: 9 gold 20 silver 17 bronze. Total 46 The first Games to introduce yellow into the logo and also the Games where South Africa won men's cricket gold (50 overs) the last time it was hosted at the Games. A star-studded Team SA beat Australia to the gold medal. Other sports to collect gold were athletics, lawn bowls, shooting and gymnastics. Medals: 10 gold 14 silver 12 bronze. Total 36 These were the first Games South Africa attended after a 36-year break of apartheid-enforced isolation. Two gold medals were won, both in lawn bowls (mens and women's Fours), while domestic stars Elana Meyer, Hezekiel Sepeng and Charmaine Weavers took silver in track and field. Team SA placed 12th on the table, which is their lowest post-isolation finish so far. Medals: 2 gold 4 silver 5 bronze. Total 11 Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.

IOL News
13 hours ago
- IOL News
The digital desecration: how social media is corrupting our sacred funeral rituals
MHLABUNZIMA MEMELA IT was a bright, beautiful Sunday, the kind of day when the sky stretches endlessly, and the world feels innocent again. I was immersed in the Clover Cup Final. I had scored four goals in three games, including the decider. Victory roared around me. Sweat, cheers and glory. That type of joy only sport can bring; primal, pure and real. My Ericsson T10, a gift from my brother Siphiwe, rang endlessly in my bag. I didn't hear it. I was unreachable. Unaware. When Siphiwe finally found me, there was no celebration in his eyes. Just something quiet. Heavy. "They have been looking for you at home. Please call them." He did not say what I now know he wanted to, that the man I had left on Saturday, my father, my giant, had taken his final breath. I had made a promise to see him the next weekend. But that promise died before I could keep it. While I was scoring goals, life was busy rewriting the script, from celebration to loss, from cheers to silence. That memory crashed into me again this week, like lightning through the spine, when I watched the funeral of Bishop Simon Moyeni Dingane 'S.D' Gumbi. A man of God. A pillar. A father to many. His farewell should have been soaked in reverence. Instead, it was drenched in spectacle. The church was full, not of mourners, but of lenses. Phones held higher than heads. People did not come to cry; they came to capture. They came dressed not in mourning, but in trend. Black became a fashion statement, not a symbol of sorrow. Grief became an aesthetic. Selfies with the casket. TikTok dances in church courtyards. Captions rehearsed like eulogies. 'Here to pay my last respects,' followed by a fire emoji and a pose. I was there. I was a witness to this tragedy within a tragedy. And I asked myself, have we fallen so far? Are we so thirsty for visibility that even death must perform for the algorithm? We used to feel grief. Now we filter it. The funeral, once a sacred space of spiritual alignment and communal healing, is now a photoshoot opportunity. The grieving mother becomes a background extra. The widow, merely a blur. The coffin, a prop. The sermon is a soundtrack for a trending reel. We have turned sacred rituals into social media content. Where once we whispered to our ancestors, now we livestream impepho (an African herb significant for its healing and spiritual properties) with ring lights and hashtags. The unveiling ceremony is now a curated experience. A 'spiritual moment' for followers and fake friends. The dead are not celebrated or honoured; they are marketed. And maybe I am too old-school. Maybe I belong to an era when grief lived in the bones, not in the likes. When funerals were heavy, not glamorous. When you wore black because your soul was darkened by loss, not because Gucci had a winter line. We once understood silence as sacred. Today, silence is considered irrelevant. We have become a nation of mourners who do not truly mourn, who show up but do not feel the loss. We document every ritual but embody none. We have traded reverence for relevance. We have become so obsessed with being seen that we no longer see, not the pain, not the moment, not even each other. This is not evolution. It is erosion. Our grandparents mourned with dignity. They walked barefoot to the grave, not for content, but for connection. They knew that when you cry, you cry with your whole being, not with one eye on the camera. They did not need Wi-Fi to feel their loss. They had memories. It was heartbreaking and deeply disrespectful to see even those we trust, priests and fellow Christians, turning the funeral into a photo opportunity. The passing of Bishop S.D. Gumbi should have been a moment of solemn reflection and honour, not a chance to post pictures and claim, 'We buried him,' as if it's about them. Where is our humility, our reverence for the sacred? We must restore dignity to how we mourn, especially as the church. We must return. Return to sacredness. Return to stillness. Return to humility. Let us teach our children that not everything must be documented and that not all grief needs a reel. That some moments are meant to be felt, not filmed. Let's remember that presence means more than showing up; it means being there in heart, in spirit, and in silence. Because if we do not, we will raise a generation that poses next to graves while their souls drift into nothingness. A generation that buries its elders but forgets their teachings. A generation that mistakes performance for purpose. The send-off of Bishop S.D. Gumbi reminded me we are a people unravelling, not just mourning poorly but forgetting how to mourn at all. We are a lost nation. And we are losing ourselves, one selfie at a time. (Memela is a former journalist who worked for various newspapers. He is also a former provincial government communications specialist. He writes in his personal capacity. His views don't necessarily reflect those of the Sunday Tribune or IOL)

IOL News
14 hours ago
- IOL News
Lythe Pillay wins men's 400m title at World University Games
IN A THRILLING display of speed and determination, South Africa's Lythe Pillay clinched the men's 400m title at the World University Games in Germany on Wednesday. Pillay, 22, showed prowess on the track, crossing the finish line in an impressive time of 44.84 seconds, signalling his readiness for the forthcoming Tokyo 2025 Games.