Wayde van Neikerk - who

 So who is Wayde van Neikerk. Where have you been hiding him.

What a magnificent 400 metres Olympic final with a new world record time beating Michael Johnson's long standing record.
Given the most difficult lane to race in he blitzed the favourites and won by a long way still pulling out as he crossed the line.
But what made the most impression on me and It brought it all back as they interviewed him after the race was the special compartmentalised thought which I hadn't heard expressed in that specific way since leaving South Africa
What used to be described as a coloured man to discriminate that race of people who had mixed blood, the result of inter breeding between the early settlers and the existing Cape tribes, a group who were predominant in the Cape Province for their unfortunate position in Apartheid South Africa of being neither fish nor fowl, neither integrated with the whites nor with the blacks, excluded since, to a subordinate role in the so called Rainbow Nation.
Amongst many, Coloured people  the church seems to play a great supportive role in their lives.
Alf Forbay a printer who worked for Anglo American Life/Southern Life, and a friend. was a man who's God meant everything, God was his yardstick and never more than a millisecond away from his thoughts as he determined his response to a problem. His whole mental demeanour was phrased in his love of God and what the scriptures taught him about people. He was never judgemental and always seemed to be prepared to manoeuvre who ever he was dealing with into the light of gods benevolence.
Listening to the interview this morning with van Neikerk,  I was taken back to the mind set of of Alf Forbay.  van Neikerks efforts in this life were like Alf dependent on gods will, the mental environment in which he lived his life was plastered through with a deferential position to his God who was at all times the provider on the track and  in his life in general with all the sustenance he would ever need.
People who have such genuine commitment, not overtly beating their breast, trying to convert but quietly effecting gods teaching, according to their belief into their everyday wisdom are a phenomena, I would say, of human conditioning, of holding a belief system when few seem to believe in anything and are therefore like a beacon amongst the hedonism of the usual track and field athletes around them.
It quaint in some ways to hear them, in this success driven environment laying off the success to someone something else, they are only the vessel through which gods will and wisdom is speaking and his word is far more important than anything Than they have just achieved.
Of course it's atavistic but still no less a reflection of the complexity of humankind as we ponder the values of Donald Trump on the one hand and Wayde van Neikerk on the other.