The “Golden Girl” of South African swimming, Tatjana Schoenmaker, feels honoured to have broken Penny Heyns’s 100m and 50m-breaststroke African records at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

“It is amazing that I was able to improve on records that have been standing for nearly 19 years. What made Penny’s performance unbelievable is that she did so swimming without ‘goggles or a suit’. If I had to swim without it, it would have been a different story. I take off my ‘hat’ to Penny for the times she swam in 1999,” said the Tuks swimmer who won the 100m-breaststroke in a time of 1:06.41.

Heyns set the African records in the 50m and 100m-breaststroke events during the Pan Pacific Championships in Sydney. Her times were 30.83s and 1:06.52.

Schoenmaker is not prepared to predict how long her records will stand.

“I think the new dawn of South African women’s swimming is about to start. We got a lot of young talented swimmers coming through the ranks. The results of the Commonwealth Games are a testimony to it. Hopefully, they will keep on setting new benchmarks in swimming.”

According to the 20-year old Tuks swimmer she did not expect to win the 100m-breaststroke. Her primary goal was to win the 200m-breaststroke which she did on Saturday setting also an African record (2:22.02). She was fourth in the 50m-breaststroke swimming a record time of 30.82s.

In spite of being the first South African female swimmer since the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to win gold medals, Schoenmaker refuses to see herself as a “Super Star”.

“Chad le Clos and Cameron van den Burgh is still the only real heroes of South African swimming. It was intimidating and inspiring to have Cameron win the 50m-breaststroke minutes before I was due to swim the 100m-breaststroke.”