The South African team taking part in the 13th International Olympiad in Informatics in Tampere, Finland last week returned with bronze, silver and gold medals.
Jaco Kroon, previously of Die Wilgers High School, won bronze, and Heinrich du Toit of Paarl Boys` High School obtained a silver medal. Bruce Merry, previously of Westerford High School in Cape Town, returned with gold. Bruce set a new IOI record by participating in his 6th IOI - more than any candidate ever.
Heinrich du Toit lives in the farming community of Agter-Paarl and goes to Paarl Boys` High. He and classmate Kurt Kruger both qualified for the IOI team by both obtaining perfect scores for the second round of the South African Computer Olympiad. What makes their achievements even more remarkable is that their own school does not offer computer programming as a subject. They go to nearby Labori High to take Computer Studies.
Bruce Merry won his way into the South African IOI team while he was still in primary school. He has taken part in every IOI since and has consistently won medals:
1996 in Hungary: Bronze
1997 in South Africa: Bronze
1998 in Portugal: Bronze
1999 in Turkey: Silver
2000 in China: Gold
2001 in Finland: Gold
The South African team to take part in IOI 2001 was selected from the 3 500 participants of the year 2000 Old Mutual/CSSA Computer Olympiad. The 15 best entries took part in a second round. The top seven were selected for further training, and the best four make up the South African IOI team. The teams participation in the IOI is sponsored by Old Mutual, which also sponsors the South African Computer Olympiad and Math Olympiad as part of an ongoing commitment to encourage excellence among South African youth.
The team that went to IOI 2001 were:
Heinrich du Toit: Paarl Boys` High
Jaco Kroon: Ex Die Wilgers High School, Pretoria, now at University of Pretoria
Kurt Kruger: Paarl Boys` High
Bruce Merry: Ex Westerford High, Cape Town, now at UCT
Peter Waker: Delegation Leader
Donald Cook: Deputy Leader
Peter Waker is the Vice President of the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA) in charge of Education and Training,
Donald Cook is a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Peter Waker is attending his tenth IOI,
Donald Cook his sixth.
The team arrived in Tampere, Finland on Saturday, and was given a day of rest to recover from a journey by plane and bus that had lasted 24 hours. On Sunday the South African team was one of the teams from 75 different countries attending the opening ceremony in the impressive Tampere Hall where the competition took place.
Tampere is an old heavy industry town that has reinvented itself as an academic and hi-tech town. It is now the home of the University of Tampere and Nokia. Like virtually everything else in Finland it is surrounded by beautiful forests and scenic lakes. The visitors spent part of their leisure time exploring the forests and lakes - sometimes even going for a walk in a forest on an island in a lake in a forest!
On the first competition day it became clear just how difficult the competition was going to be. Thirty of the 272 participants scored no points at all. The South African Team had mixed fortunes with Bruce Merry scoring 145 and Heinrich du Toit 115.
The second competition day was no easier: At least 18 teams scored zero. Things went much better for the stars of the South African team, though. After proving that his program was correct, and the evaluation had been flawed, Bruce Merry was given a remarkable 100% for the second day. Heinrich du Toit too had a good day, scoring 235 out of 300.
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