Photo: Gavin Barker/BackpagePix

South Africa's Caster Semenya wins silver in the women's 800m finals.

London — Caster Semenya won a silver medal in the women's 800 metres final at the London Olympic Games on Saturday to make it South Africa's most successful appearance since readmission to international sport.

The 21-year-old's silver was the country's sixth at these Games adding to those of swimmers Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh, the men's coxless lightweight fours rowing team and Bridgitte Hartley in the canoe sprint.

Semenya finished second behind Russia's Mariya Savinova (1:56.19) in in a time of one minute, 57.23 seconds (1:57.23) running her best race of the season.

The third place went to Ekaterina Poistogova of Russia who finished in 1:57.53.

Meanwhile, South African cyclist Candice Neethling finished 30th of 30 riders in the women's cross country final.

Neethling finished in a time of one hour, 45 minutes and three seconds (1:45:03), 14.11 minutes behind French rider Julie Bresset, who finished in a time of one hour, 30 minutes and 52 seconds (1:30:52).

Germany's Sabine Spitz finished second (1:31:54), ahead of United States rider Georgia Gould (1:32:00), who bagged the bronze medal.

The South African men's hockey team ended their London Olympics campaign on a high, after beating India 2-1 in the teams' 11th/12th playoff classification match at the Riverbank Arena.

The win sees them finish 11th overall, lifting themselves off the bottom of the pecking order and restoring some pride in the national side as they defeated India for the first time in a major international tournament.

SA suffered a poor campaign, after finishing with a single point, after playing to a 2-2 draw with Great Britain in their second match of pool A, but losing four fixtures in their pool.

Marc Mundell finished 32nd out of 51 athletes in the men's 50km race walk at The Mall in London, setting a new African record in the process.

Mundell finished in a time of three hours, 55 minutes and 32 seconds (3:55:32), 19 minutes and 33 seconds slower than Russian winner Sergey Kirdyapkin, who set a new Olympic record with his time of 3:35:59.

Australia's Jared Tallent (3:36:53) finished second, ahead of China's Tianfeng Si (3:37:16), who claimed the bronze medal.

Mundell was the only African athlete to take part in the race.