Caster Semenya came second and won a silver medal in yesterday's 800-metre women's race(REUTERS)
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Caster Semenya has lifted South Africa to its most successful Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Games in the US.
Her silver medal in the women's 800-metres took Team South Africa's tally to six. The country now has three gold, two silver and one bronze. The running sensation came from behind to finish second in front of a sold out Olympic Stadium last night. Toby Sutcliffe, CEO of the University of Pretoria's High Performance Centre, where Semenya has been trained, says she has made South Africa proud.
"We need to be proud of her. People wrote her off many months ago, saying she was not qualifying as she was running badly. We knew that we had a plan to make it at the Olympics. You don't work for peaking three or four times in one season - you basically have to pieak at the right time and I think she did. Unfortunately she didn't go out fast enough and she may have given the number one in the world a bit of a hard time, but we are re very, very proud of her," says Sutcliffe.
The ANC Youth League has also commended Caster Semenya for finishing second in the women's 800-metres final at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Semenya, the 2009 world champion, crossed the line in one-minute-57-point-two-three seconds, a season's best. Russia's Mariyah Savinova won the race in one-minute-56-point-one-nine-second, while Ekaterine Poistogova of Russia was third in one-minute-57-point-five-three seconds.
