15-year-old Irene van Niekerk from Pretoria had the chance of a lifetime, when she had a private training session with world champion athlete Zola Budd recently. The young runner has astounded everyone with her 32 gold medal wins in middle distances over the past two years, despite numerous personal challenges.
Van Niekerk has been living in a white squatter camp for the past six years and has managed to blast a victorious trail in the 800m and 1500m distances on the local school circuit, despite injuries she sustained while she was young which included significant hearing loss due to ear infections, malnutrition and mutilated feet.
The meeting between the two has been instigated by Durban-based financial services provider The Unlimited, who sponsors Budd’s participation in local races. “When we first heard Irene’s story, we thought that it would be an incredible opportunity to introduce her to an iconic runner such as Zola. Irene is succeeding despite personal challenges and is even being called Little Zola by her classmates. We hope that this training session will inspire her to further her running career and give her some guidance from someone who also had to face difficult situations. Our business ethos is to help ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things and we believed that Irene would benefit tremendously from meeting Zola, who has achieved so much during the past three decades,” mentions Steph Bester, CEO of The Unlimited.
There are many similarities between the young Irene and her role model Zola Budd. Both started running at an early age and Irene still prefers to run barefoot, just like Zola in her younger days. Irene’s choice of footwear is however caused by the fact that she sustained severe burn injuries to her feet when she was younger and find most running shoes very painful. Both also suffered the tragic loss of a sibling and parental guidance has played a role in their success. Zola was initially coached and managed by her farther, while Irene’s mother is involved in her running career.
Irene dreams only of representing South Africa internationally and being seen running on television. However, Zola hopes to be giving her some tips about managing her running career. “I wish that I had had someone to teach me the ropes in those early days. Looking back, I should have said no more often, but I didn’t know that this was an option. This is the most important advice that I can give to Irene and her family,” explains Zola.
URL: http://www.theunlimited.co.za
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Author: Christel Liebenberg from Peridot Communications. Originally distributed by MyPR.co.za.
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Zola and Irene on the training track Photographer: The Unlimited
