By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Bianca Buitendag of South Africa is greeted on the shore during the women’s surfing at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Tsurigasaki Surfing Beach in Ichinomiyai, Japan, 27 July 2021. EPA.
Bianca Buitendag won a silver medal in the women’s surfing at the Olympic Games on Tuesday on what was a fantastic day for Team South Africa in Tokyo.
It is South Africa’s second medal of this year’s showpiece after Tatjana Schoenmaker won silver in the 100m breaststroke earlier in the day.
The final of the surfing was brought forward by a day due to concerns over a storm approaching, and Buitendag had earlier continued her good form on Tuesday when she moved past Portugal’s Yolanda Hopkins and America’s Caroline Marks in the quarter-final and semi-final, respectively.
In the gold medal match, Buitendag lost out to America’s Carissa Moore, going down 14.93 to 8.46.
It just wasn’t meant to be for the 27-year-old South African, who struggled to get going and find any waves where she could put a competitive score together.
Moore, meanwhile, had arrived at Tsurigasaki beach as the favourite, and she quickly found a couple of decent waves to open up an early lead over Buitendag that she would not relinquish.
The scores for the top two waves count for each surfer in a match, and when Moore had put together waves of 7.60 and 7.33, it was always going to be a massive ask for Buitendag to find a way back into the contest.
The South African’s two best waves came in at 5.23 and 3.23.
Meanwhile the Blitzboks were stunned by Argentina on Tuesday, losing their quarter-final at the Tokyo Olympics 19-14 to see their chances of a medal disappear.
It is an incredibly disappointing result for Team South Africa, who were banking on the sevens side for a medal after they won bronze at Rio in 2016.
The South African task should have been made significantly easier by the fact the Argentina played the majority of the match with just six players after Gaston Revol was red-carded in just the third minute.
Instead, the South Americans were galvanised by that moment, and they ran in two tries in the first-half to take a 14-7 lead into the break after Selvyn Davids had scored first for South Africa.
When the underdogs scored their third try, South Africa were19-7 down and buried against all odds.
The Blitzboks were awarded a penalty try in the final minute of play, but it was too little too late.
Elsewhere Dayaan Cassiem’s brace could not prevent the South Africa Men’s hockey team slumping to a 9-4 defeat to Belgium in their Pool B clash at the Tokyo Olympics.
Cassiem struck twice at the start of each half to go along with goals from his teenage brother Mustapha and Nqobile Ntuli, but the African champions could simply not stay with the pace of a slick Belgian outfit.
The Belgians were particularly clinical in their short corner execution with Alexander Hendrickx maintaining his goal-scoring hot streak here in Tokyo. The defender added another hat-trick to his tally after also banging in three goals in Belgium’s previous match against The Netherlands.
Veteran midfielder John-John Dohmen, who is competing in his fourth Olympics, banged home a brace, while Thomas Briels, Simon Gougnard, Cedric Charlier and Arhur van Doren also stuck the ball past Rassie Pieterse in the South African goal.
The defeat was the third of the South African team’s Tokyo 2020 campaign after previous losses to Great Britain (3-1) and The Netherlands (5-3) and they have now virtually been eliminated from the competition.