Burger Lambrechts

Burger Lambrechts
Lambrechts at the 2012 World Indoor Championships.
Born	Burger Lambrechts 3 April 1973 Phalaborwa, South Africa
Alma mater	University of Pretoria

Burger Lambrechts (born 3 April 1973 in Phalaborwa) is a South African shot putter.

He attended Laerskool Nelspruit, where he was head-boy in 1986 and Hoërskool Waterkloof, where he was vice head-boy in 1991. As far as tertiary education is concerned, Lambrechts attained a BSC (Genetics) from the University of Pretoria in 1995 and a BA ("Biology") from Western Michigan University in 1996.

His international career started with a fifteenth place at the 1992 World Junior Championships. The following year he took his first national shot put title. In 1994 he threw past the 19 metre mark for the first time, with 19.06 metres achieved in April in his birth city. At his first World Championships, in 1997, he reached the final and placed tenth. He only managed one valid throw. In 1998 he won the gold medal at the African Championships with a throw of 19.78 metres. This was the best winning result since 1982, when Youssef Nagui Asaad threw 20.44 metres. In the same year he threw 20.01 metres when winning the Commonwealth Games held in Kuala Lumpur, and 20.29 metres in Johannesburg in September. Rarely competing in other athletics events, Lambrechts did throw 53.68 metres with the hammer (1996) and 58.60 with the discus (October 1998).

The following year Lambrechts led a South African clean sweep in the shot put at the All-Africa Games while fellow South Africans (Frantz Kruger, Chris Harmse and Marius Corbett) won the other three throwing events for men. Throwing 19.50 metres, this time Lambrechts beat the championship record of Youssef Nagui Asaad, which had stood at 19.48 since 1973. He finished ninth at the World Championships the same year, once again with only one valid throw in the final round. At the 2000 Summer Olympic Lambrechts failed to reach the final for the first time in a worldwide event. He reportedly suffered a calf injury during the competition, but still managed to achieve a distance of 19.75 meter, with which he fell just 4 centimetres short of the place in the final, which ironically went to his compatriot Janus Robberts, though Canada's Bradley Snyder was even closer with 19.77 metres.