‘MEDALS ARE A BONUS’
WHEN she was just four years old she insisted on taking off her safety gear while in the pool, despite her mom’s warnings not to swim without it. And when her mother turned her back for just a moment, the little girl leapt into the water.
“Her face was underwater, but she was furiously kicking,” Joa van Niekerk recalls of her sister’s antics. “She was going in circles. It was too funny! I jumped in and pulled her out.”
Now Joa’s little sister, Lara van Niekerk, could swim circles around anyone – and proved her prowess in
