Andre De Grasse came to Pretoria to test himself in two races on the same evening, and the second one finally went the way Canadian fans were hoping. The seven-time Olympic medallist led a Canadian one-two in the 200m at the inaugural Simbine Classic on Tuesday, winning by a comfortable margin in 19.96 ahead of Aaron Brown's 20.07. The USA's Kyree King was third in 20.24 to round out the podium at the High Performance Centre.
The 200m result took some of the sting out of De Grasse's earlier appearance in the 100m, where he had finished a flat third in 10.08 behind Cameroon's Emmanuel Eseme and the USA's Pjai Austin. Home favourite Akani Simbine pulled up injured midway down that 100m straight, the night's most striking image — South Africa's most decorated sprinter clutching at his hamstring on the track surface he had personally helped re-laid for the meet that bears his name.
The 200m, by contrast, suited De Grasse exactly. He executed a clean push out of the curve, hit the straight a metre clear of Brown, and held form into the line without obviously pressing. His agent confirmed afterwards that the result is the fastest 200m he has run since the World Championships in Budapest in 2023. De Grasse will continue his African swing in Botswana next week before opening the Diamond League season at Shanghai/Keqiao on May 16, where he is entered in the 100m alongside Letsile Tebogo and Kishane Thompson.
Elsewhere on the Pretoria card, the women's events had two clean American wins. Kayla White took the 200m in 22.68, with Kenondra Davis second (23.22) and Trinidad and Tobago's Leah Bertrand third in 23.39. Olympic 200m champion Gabby Thomas, listed in both the 100m and 200m, raced only the 100m, winning in 10.95 before withdrawing from the longer race citing fatigue from the long-haul travel out of Eugene. Thomas had run 21.89 in Nairobi at the Kip Keino Classic three days earlier, the fastest 200m ever recorded on African soil; the late scratch in Pretoria was always likely.
The meet, a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver, is the first edition of an event that Akani Simbine has been working on for two years as part of an explicit plan to grow professional sprinting infrastructure inside South Africa. Television coverage carried by SuperSport and SABC drew an estimated half-million-strong domestic audience, by far the largest figure for a one-night track meeting on the continent in recent memory. With Simbine's home injury aside, the night largely delivered the proof of concept he was after — a packed home stadium, six legitimate world-class fields and the kind of late-evening 200m that the Diamond League will struggle to match for atmosphere when its own season starts in three weeks.