Sporting heroes of 2024 conquer lofty heights

With sporting moments such as a swimmer causing a sensation at the Midmar Mile and a goalkeeper signing for the mighty Mamelodi Sundowns, 2024 has been a good sporting year for our community. Here are some highlights.

At the Midmar Mile in KwaZulu-Natal in February, matric student Rachel Smith surprised top swimmers and commentators by managing to finish tied for fifth place with a time of just more than 23 minutes for the 1.6km race despite starting off in a crowd of nearly 1 000 swimmers with slower seeding times.

Having now finished matric at King David High School Linksfield (KDHSL), Smith says, “A further swimming pool highlight while studying full-time for matric finals was competing at the SA Short Course Championships in Durban, flying out for the last two days of the competition the morning after my matric dance, and still obtaining my South African National Junior time to compete next year at the SANJ (SA National Junior Championships) 2025. Another open-water highlight was winning the Gauteng inter-schools open-water event at Prime View.”

Yeshiva College student Judah Rubenstein got scouted by Mamelodi Sundowns and now plays a year above his age in the academy of the Pretoria-based club that has won past seven top division league titles. “Now I’m going to play in a big tournament called the Iber Cup, and Paris Saint-Germain, PSV Eindhoven, Arsenal, and other big teams are coming from all over the world,” he says.

Rubenstein also made the under-12 district team, which came second. “I also made provincials, and we were the best team there,” he says.

On top of all this, “I was interviewed by a big journalist who exposes young football stars. His name is Cellular Jnr, and his nickname is Ah Bafethu.”

Yeshiva College student Amichai Asulin says his biggest sporting achievement this year was making the Johannesburg table tennis team, and his sporting highlight was playing in the South Africa National Table Tennis Championships, in which he won a gold medal.

Dean Herskovits and Jayden Myers won a bronze medal in the under-16 boys tennis doubles competition at the 2024 European Maccabi Youth Games in London to continue South Africa’s record of winning at least one medal at every Maccabi tournament the country has contested since 1935.

A King David Linksfield student, Herskovits also had a good year in other sports. He was named the most promising junior cross country and basketball player for KDHSL this year.

Fourteen-year-old Caleb Levitan completed a remarkable climb up the chess ranks by recently becoming the top-ranked South African male chess player. Based on Chess South Africa ratings, this International Chess Federation Master title holder is the youngest player in the top 10, with only two others being teenagers.

His twin brother and fellow KDHSL student, Candidate Master Judah, occupies sixth place in the junior rankings.

Last month, Caleb got the chance to play a friendly game against super grandmaster Wesley So in Singapore while in the Southeast Asian country, having been invited to watch the World Chess Championship after he won an Olympiad match to help South Africa book a spot at next year’s Chess World Cup.

Aside from all these up-and-coming youngsters, Michael Said, in his early sixties, completed the demanding David Goggins 4x4x48 Challenge, which involves running or walking four miles (6.4km) every four hours for 48 hours, walking 77km for more than 48 hours along the streets of Bedfordview.

By doing this walk, Said raised funds to change the lives of kids with cerebral palsy, and capped off a remarkable personal transformation from being an overweight and tired potato chip-lover only two years earlier.

“Besides the Goggins 4x4x48, my biggest achievement over the past year was reclaiming my health and fitness,” he says. “I also hiked the Otter Trail and Tsitsikamma Trail back-to-back over 11 days.”

The Otter Trail is a 42km, five-day hiking trail along the Garden Route coast, and the Tsitsikamma trail is a 60km six-day trail through indigenous Afromontane forests, mountain fynbos, and ancient river gorges. “These were 11 days of hiking through rain and shine, challenging climbs, beautiful settings, and unforgettable experiences,” Said says.