Javelin champion Sunette Viljoen still dreams of playing for the Proteas again

Sunette Viljoen of Team SA competes in the javelin final of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games at Carrara Stadium in Australia.Photo: Wessel Oosthuizen/Saspa

By Keanan Hemmonsbey

7 Jul 2024

It’s been 24 years since Sunette Viljoen became the youngest Proteas Women cricketer yet. She carved out an incredible career in athletics in the meantime, including landing an Olympic silver medal.

In 2000, Sunette Viljoen became the youngest Proteas Women cricketer to date when she made her debut as a 17-year-old against England in a One Day International. And she struck 31, the second-highest score among the South Africans on the day.

Her last match for the country was a Test against India in Paarl, in which she scored a second-innings 71, as an 18-year-old.

Now, at 40, she has aspirations of representing the Proteas again.

In 22 years Viljoen has carved an impressive field athletics career that includes participation at four Olympic Games, including clinching a silver medal in Rio 2016 in javelin.

The only reason she chose to venture into athletics and forgo her international cricket career was because the women’s game was still amateur at that stage.

“I would have stayed with cricket,” Viljoen told Daily Maverick. “If my journey didn’t lead to javelin, I would have continued to play cricket.

“Back then I didn’t have a choice because cricket was amateur.

“I was 18, just finished matric, and I was offered an athletics bursary. All my studies were paid by North West University so my parents didn’t have any expenses while I was studying.

“It was the best choice, at the time, to choose javelin because I was good at javelin as well, but if I was paid back then and if [women’s] cricket was televised, I would have chosen cricket,” Viljoen said.

London setback

A high school athletics coach convinced her to take up javelin after seeing how far she could launch a cricket ball, in a sport she had been playing since she was a toddler.

The ability to chuck a javelin into the sky and land it on its sharp side came naturally to Viljoen, who had an innate ability to throw various objects over impressive distances.

She quickly rose through the ranks to the South African Olympic teams in 2004 in Athens and 2008 in Beijing. While she had dominated in Africa and won one Commonwealth Games gold between those two Games, her global javelin dominance only came from 2011 onwards.

Viljoen won silver at the World Championships in Daegu, Korea in 2011 with a distance of 68.38m, a then-African record that she would better a year later.

“The 2012 season was the best of my career,” Viljoen said. “Before the London Olympics, I had two enormous throws, one in Rome at the Diamond League. I threw a 67.96m. I came second that night.

“I flew across the Atlantic Ocean, competed in New York at the next Diamond League, where I hit – the African and Commonwealth record – 69.35m.

“I boomed into world No 1 headed into the London Olympic Games.”

She went into London 2012 as the favourite for the gold medal, but it all fell apart that evening, on 9 August.

“Sometimes if you want something so much, the harder you try, the less you get it right.” Viljoen explained what she went through in London, trying to eke out a few more metres with every throw.

Sunette Viljoen of Team SA competes in the javelin final of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games at Carrara Stadium in Australia. (Photo: Wessel Oosthuizen / Saspa)

“On that specific night, I knew I had the capability of throwing farther than (eventual gold medallist) Barbora Špotáková who was leading because I [had beaten] her throughout the same year.

“I just didn’t hit my straps in the final. I was in bronze medal position until the last round and then German Linda Stahl threw [3.8] centimetres farther than me.”

Viljoen’s distance of 64.53m was just not enough to capture a medal.

“I remember I picked up the javelin to take my last throw and [Stahl] was sitting on her haunches, looking away because she didn’t want to see me take my last throw.

“I ended up in the dreadful, awful fourth position which was so heartbreaking for me. It is a position I would never give to my worst enemy… My heart was in pieces. I didn’t win an Olympic medal. It was the saddest moment of my athletics career.”

The pain of not reaching the goal she set out to achieve was felt again and again when Viljoen got back to South Africa.

“Coming back home, if someone looked at me, I cried,” she said. “If someone said something about the Olympics, I cried.

“I trained again and every time I picked up a weight, I cried.

“I was the best javelin thrower that year, just not on that night.”

Rio comeback

Nevertheless, Viljoen picked herself up to make another charge at the Games, this time in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

“I wouldn’t say I was desperate for a medal in Rio,” she said. “It was just a chance to prove to myself what I’m capable of and to close the chapter of London by winning an Olympic medal.”

Viljoen opened proceedings in the final with a 64.92m throw. She failed to better the distance in her other five attempts – two of which were legal.

She watched as Croatia’s Sara Kolak took the lead in her fourth throw with a 66.18m missile; five other athletes, including 2012 gold medallist Špotáková, hit 64m but all were less than Viljoen’s opening attempt.

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“It was raining that night,” she said. “I get goosebumps just talking about that evening… I remember standing there, asking God not to take away the medal again,” she said.

“In athletics, anything can happen in a split second. You can be on top and the next throw you are sixth.

“To have won there was such a special moment.”

“I stood there counting which athletes had finished their last round and when I saw there were three [athletes] left, I knew I had won an Olympic medal.

“It didn’t matter the colour.”

Full circle

Viljoen never officially retired from athletics but after failing to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games 2020, held in 2021 owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, because of a shoulder injury, she decided to take up playing cricket recreationally to keep active.

She played club cricket and was quickly called up to the Titans, making her first appearance for the Pretoria side at the end of 2022.

“It was not something I was looking for. I just started to play cricket again.”

Her cricket journey has come full circle and she now has a professional contract with the Lions in Johannesburg.

Despite being 40 years old, Viljoen’s aspirations remain being the best in the world and representing South Africa again.

“If I look back at what I achieved in my athletics career, I’m immensely proud of it.

“But the little girl inside of me is a cricket player.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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London setback

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Full circle