Matric swimmer gets top results

Matric pupil Hannah Robertson has won four medals, including two golds, for South Africa at the ongoing Maccabi Games. This St Andrew’s School for Girls scholar bagged golds in the 100 and 400m freestyle races as well as silver in the 200m freestyle and bronze in the 800m freestyle.

“It feels amazing,” she says, “especially to win the 100 because I haven’t really decided what my main race is. So to win in a sprint race was exciting. I was very happy.”

For the 100m distance, she first swam in the heats in the morning, qualifying for the A and not the B final, meaning she stood a chance at a medal.

“I expected to win gold because I saw where I was ranked before I swam. I was ranked first and obviously that motivated me even more because I knew I had a chance. Even if I was ranked second, it would have motivated me to win.”

Robertson followed in her mother’s footsteps into swimming. “Since I was a little girl, I swam with her, and she coached me,” she says of her mother, who coaches swimming and has a swim school. “I just loved the sport so I carried on swimming and then when I was nine, I moved to the coach I’m with now. I loved swimming so much, I just started and never stopped.”

Recently, Robertson has been training every day at her school in Bedfordview, Johannesburg. “Since I’m in matric, I swim in whatever time I have available because I know when I write exams in the near future, I’m going to have a lot less time.”

For now, she is focused on the two races she still has at the Maccabiah. Initially, she wasn’t even in the team when South Africa’s swimming squad was announced. “I only found out that my coach was going to the games six or eight weeks before the team was supposed to leave. I said to him, ‘Since you are going, can’t I just come with then?’ So I was actually late on the team.”

Robertson says she would love to win an Olympic medal  one day. “That’s the goal I’m training for. I don’t mind if it comes in two years, six years or eight years.”

Robertson’s great-grandmother was adopted at a very young age, at the time of the Holocaust. “She didn’t know that she was Jewish. After the Holocaust, she discovered she was, indeed, Jewish and that both her parents were Jewish, meaning my gran, mom and I are Jewish. Now my mom’s boyfriend is also Jewish. We often go to Friday night dinner with him, so I’m exposed to the religion. It’s really amazing because I love the religion a lot.”

Photo credit: Mark Patterson