SA’s gold-panning team returns victorious from the World Gold Panning Championships held in Slovakia

South Africa’s gold-panning team returned with one gold and two bronze medals from the World Gold Championships in Slovakia on 24 August 2007.  The team consisted of 26 members with three of the medal winners being from Mpumalanga. Though it is not a very popular sport, it has been around for a long time, with the championships having been held annually since 1977. Gold-panning is basically an old method of gold mining. In the sport, participants are required to search for tiny pieces of gold from man-made pools using pans in the fastest time possible. As a mining method, It is cheap and simple, though not very lucrative.