Wayde van Niekerk’s new opponent – is he the real deal or just great on paper?

This week was a big one for declarations of intent in athletics.

While Wayde van Niekerk was reiterating his desire to break his 400m record again, in an interview with his predecessor for that title, Michael Johnson, Michael Norman was running a 9.86-second 100m at the strangely named AP High-Performance Invitationals 1-5 competition in Fort Worth, Texas, US.

At this juncture, most South Africans