This Chad must pay his way to win his ticket to Rio Games
AS Chad Ho trained anonymously at the King’s Park pool recently, his more famous namesake, Chad Le Clos, was deckside doing a shoot for a television commercial.
Chad and Chad are both world champions who have had to fight for what they got, but in other ways they are like chalk and cheese.
Le Clos, also an Olympic gold medallist, has deservedly cashed in on his successes.
But Ho, the open-water 5km world champion and the seven-times king of the Midmar Mile, isn’t in the same league, paying out of his own pocket to compete abroad. Ho flies out on Tuesday for Setubal, Portugal, where next Sunday he and three other SA swimmers will try to qualify for the Rio Olympics in the 10km event. They must finish in the top nine. Ho is eyeing his second Games, having raced as a matric pupil at Beijing 2008, finishing ninth, just 20 seconds short of the podium.
His career started promisingly, with bronze in the non-Olympic 5km event at the 2009 world championships and overall victory of the 10km World Cup series in 2010.
But after failing to qualify for London 2012, he lost his funding from the SA Olympic Committee (Sascoc). Not even finishing eighth in the 10km and fourth in the 5km at the 2013 world championships could get him back on their books.
“It has been hard to stay motivated, but I love what I do,” said Ho, who didn’t compete overseas for two years after that.
“I just didn’t have the funds to go travelling internationally,” said Ho, who crowd-funded to get to the 2015 world championships.
“The 5km took me by complete surprise . . . I wanted to use the 5km as a warm-up,” said Ho, who turns 26 later this month.
The Olympic 10km race two days later “didn’t go to plan”.
Ho has a sponsorship from a game lodge and has launched his own brand of peak caps, car stickers and wrist bands.
His parents, who work in different countries, help where they can; his mother is a care-worker in Britain and his father works for a betting firm in Johannesburg. “They’re still together but they’ve had to be apart just to help . . . They’ve sacrificed a huge amount for the family.”
The Midmar Mile is his favourite race because it’s a family outing.
“The skottel is going the whole day, it’s a day out. Everyone’s there. We just make it a family day for us, that’s why it’s more special to me.”