Selection deficiencies

THE South African team will get on the plane bound for the 2018 Commonwealth Games bullish of their chances of returning with a bag full of medals, but also a feeling that some may be left behind.

The three-day South African Track and Field Championships gave evidence of this with medal hopefuls such as Caster Semenya and Luvo Manyonga once again putting up their hands.

But it was rather the performances of athletes that were not initially selected or the emergence of new talent that stole the show.

The championships exposed the deficiencies in the way the track and field teams are selected and the debate about hosting trials should perhaps be reopened.

Clarence Munyai, whose name did not appear when the South African team was announced in January, shattered the national 200m record, launching himself into the 10th place on the world all-time list.

The 20-year-old Munyai chopped 0.15 seconds off world 400m record-holder Wayde van Niekerk’s onelap mark he set in Jamaica in June 2016.

His name appeared only after the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) added the names of a 4x100m relay team.

South Africa’s fastest woman Carina Horn thumbed her nose at the Sascoc selectors when she broke the 28-year-old national 100m record she shared with Evette de Klerk since 2015. Horn shaved 0.03 off the previous record with a time of 11.03.

TO ADD to the case against whatever selection criteria Sascoc used, the two male 400m hurdlers in the team could not make it onto the podium at the championships.

Orazio Cremona, who also did not crack the nod for the initial team, won his seventh national shot-put title with a heave that ranks him fourth in the Commonwealth.

Top female sprinter Justine Palframan sent a strong statement to Sascoc on Saturday when she won both the 200m and 400m titles just 45 minutes apart.

She had found herself out in the cold when the team was selected, but produced two of her fastest times ever in both events.