Lara van Niekerk
South African competitive swimmer
Lara van Niekerk (born 13 May 2003) is a South African competitive swimmer. She is the current African, Commonwealth, and South African record holder in the long course 50-metre breaststroke and the African and South African record holder in the short course 50-metre breaststroke. She won gold medals in the 50-metre breaststroke at the 2018 African Swimming Championships and the 2022 Commonwealth Games as well as a silver medal at the 2022 World Short Course Championships and the bronze medal at the 2022 World Aquatics Championships (long course) in the same event. In the 100-metre breaststroke, she won gold medals at the 2018 African Swimming Championships and the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
Background
Van Niekerk was born 13 May 2003 in South Africa.
Career
2017–2019
At the 2017 African Junior Swimming Championships in Cairo, Egypt in March, Van Niekerk won a total of five medals including gold medals in the 100-metre breaststroke, 4×100-metre mixed medley relay, 50-metre breaststroke, 4×100-metre medley relay, and a silver medal in the 200-metre breaststroke.
In 2018, at the year's African Swimming Championships in Algiers, Algeria, Van Niekerk won a gold medal in each of the four events she competed. She won her first gold medal in the 200-metre breaststroke with a time of 2:35.25. For her second gold medal, she won the 50-metre breaststroke with a new Championships record time of 31.99 seconds, which broke the former record of 32.06 seconds set by Tilka Paljk of Zambia in the prelims heats. In the 100-metre breaststroke, she won her third gold medal of the Championships, finishing over eight-tenths of a second ahead of the silver medalist in the event with a time of 1:11.13.
“Lara van Niekerk” enters the record as south African competitive swimmer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lara, Niekerk and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lara van Niekerk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.