Le Clos… but no cigar
HE Olympic Games have produced some outstanding, record-breaking performances from the best athletes on the planet.
With the games concluding this Sunday, Rio 2016 will go down as one of the most memorable in recent times, for both positive and negative reasons.
Team South Africa should be setting medal targets in excess of 20 for every Olympic Games. Unfortunately, we are not blessed with forward-thinking, innovative sports leaders. Yes, we will probably reach our 10 medal target, but this is still not good enough.
My advice for our administrators is to focus on two or three codes. Invest in these so our athletes become masters of their craft. Jamaica focuses on sprinting and this is where they target all of their medals. Kenya does the same with long-distance running and Australia with swimming.
Wayde van Niekerk shone with a stunning gold and aworld record, but as always, we relied on the swimming pool for most of our medals. And even though Chad le Clos was off his game, we still did well enough – Cameron van der Burgh claimed silver in the 100m breaststroke and Le Clos an unexpected medal (silver) in the 200m freestyle.
I find it interesting that Chad did not add the 50m and 100m freestyles to his repertoire, considering the powerful starts he had in the 200m, where he was a body length ahead up to the 100m mark in his heat, semi and final. Sadly, he failed in the much-hyped 200m butterfly final, finishing a disappointing fourth.
He correctly proclaimed afterwards: “It was the worst race of my career.”
Michael Phelps confirmed his legendary status with another huge personal medal haul and Chad learned a harsh life lesson: never “poke the bear”.
He made up for this with a silver in a three-way tie in the 100m tie.
Phelps certainly deserves credit for an athlete in the twilight of his career
Other SA medals came in the form of more silvers in rowing and long-jump and a bronze in rugby.
Shame on Sascoc for not allowing our women’s rugby team and both our hockey teams to compete, even though they qualified to do so!
The US and China look set to top the medals table yet again. I truly wonder how athletes and citizens from countries such as Wales, Ireland and Scotland feel, competing under the Great Britain brand, and not that of their own country?
On a lighter note, some sporting codes do come off as a joke. The 20km walk was extremely funny on the eye, looking like awkward running in slow motion, but the one that has to take the cake is the trampoline event.
Note to all kids in their backyard: yes, you too can win Olympic gold by doing exactly what you do for fun every day.
How about some real sports, like cricket? Next thing you know, Tokyo 2020 will have gold up for grabs in the Pokemon Go final.
ENGLISH Premier League fans would have been extremely excited to see the new season begin, unless they were Leicester City fans, of course.
The defending champions lost their opening game to lowly Hull City, confirming the EPL as the league where any team can beat any other team on the day. It is far too early to begin to make predictions, but the likes of Liverpool and both Manchester clubs showed early intent with victories on the opening weekend.
Good luck to all 20 teams.
IN CONCLUSION I know I join all patriotic South Africans in wishing our Proteas and Springboks all the best for major international assignments beginning this weekend.
Our cricket boys are up against a solid New Zealand outfit, without skipper AB de Villiers, and anything other than a series win would spell disaster.
The Boks begin their daunting Rugby Championship quest with a tough fixture at home to Argentina. God help us against the All Blacks!
Enjoy what is left of Rio 2016. Until next time: happy sports viewing!