OLYMPICS: HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO
A week before SA’s side for the Rio Games is announced, Luke Alfred assesses the country’s chances of medals
Rio de Janeiro’s balmy winter climate could provide the perfect backdrop for SA’s best Olympics yet. With known medal contenders such as Chad le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh (swimming) and Caster Semenya and Wayde van Niekerk (athletics) in the team, the August haul could be Team SA’s biggest to date.
There are a number of outside contenders for medals, too — the lightweight coxless fours in rowing and the Blitzbokke in sevens rugby, for example — enough reason to be cautiously optimistic.
In London in 2012, SA won three golds, two silvers and one bronze. The golds went to Van der Burgh (100 m breaststroke), Le Clos (200 m butterfly), and the men’s lightweight fours rowing combination; Semenya took the 800 m silver; Le Clos added to his haul with silver in the 100 m butterfly; and canoeist Bridgitte Hartley took bronze in the K-1,500 m.
The feel-good factor is not to be sniffed at in SA, where bad news is all too plentiful.
Next month’s Olympics will begin on August 5, two days after the municipal elections. So while Rio is on a Games high (the event runs until August 21), SA will be seeing winter temperatures plunge and snow on the peaks will be a real possibility.
Good news to warm the cockles of the collective heart will indeed be welcome. Whether it comes in the pool, on the track, on the field or in the lake, there is a desperate need for achievements, something of which an increasingly fractious and disaffected nation can be proud.
There is a rapidly approaching cold front when it comes to SA’s Olympic assault, however, and this concerns Semenya, who has been in the form of her life so far in 2016. The athlete has already run the quickest 800 m in the world this year and is cleaning up generally, as she did at last month’s African Athletics Championships in Durban, winning the 1,500 m and the 800 m and rounding off her golds by anchoring the women’s 4 x 400 m relay team to victory.
Jean Verster, Semenya’s coach at the Potch campus of North West University (NWU), is not at all certain that she’ll compete outside her 800 m signature event in Rio, but hasn’t closed the door on the idea. It could yet be a remarkable Games for the athlete, except for the fact there have already been much-publicised questions about her high testosterone levels.
Quickly summarised, the argument against suggests that her form is directly relatable to her increased levels of testosterone. Two years ago, when her testosterone levels were low, argue the naysayers, her form was elusive.
The Semenya sceptics add that — inadvertently —