BURST OF SPEED
More youngsters are making their mark, but there’s a coaching crisis on the horizon
ATHLETICS coach Hennie Kriel says South Africa is enjoying a sprint revolution, but he cautions too that the sport faces a coaching crisis in the not too distant future.
The country’s top coaches are getting old.
“There’s a serious crisis waiting in athletics,” said Kriel, one of SA’s two sprints coaches at the African championships in Durban this week.
“A lot of coaches are 50 plus and I cannot see the structure to [create] the next generation of coaches. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I cannot see them currently.
“We need to invest in that very urgently because without world-class coaches you will not have world-class performances,” he warned. He has taken a young coach under his wing and is looking for a second apprentice. “That is maybe a system we need to look at, we older coaches.”
Discus-thrower Victor Hogan gave substance to Kriel’s theory after capturing his third straight continental crown, attributing his new-found consistency this season to full-time coachand ing in Stellenbosch.
“For the first time in five years I’m training with [veteran coach] Kai Preller on a daily basis,” he said.
The men’s 400m hurdles in SA has been competitive since the last millennium, but the sprinters have broken ceilings only recently.
From April 2014 to July 2015, SA men punctured all three sprint barriers, becoming only the second nation after the US to set national records of sub-10 seconds for the 100m, sub-20 for the 200m and sub-44 for the 400m.
That’s the work of five men to date — Wayde van Niekerk (200m, 400m and 100m), Anaso Jobodwana (200m), Akani Simbine, Henricho Bruintjies Simon Magakwe (all 100m).
Four of them have the potential to win a 4x100m relay medal at the Olympics in August — two were in the team this week that won SA’s fifth continental crown since 1992.
But now it’s up to Athletics SA to arrange a Games qualification attempt before the July 11 deadline.
SA’s women are on the up too, ending the run of four-times African champions Nigeria.
Yet the individual 100m titles this week were taken by Ivory Coast.
Third-placed Simbine is working on his start, which he recently discussed with Glen Mills, coach of world No 1 Usain Bolt. “There’s a lot of points coach Mills picked up on, but I can’t change all those things now because I will be out for a couple of weeks because the stuff that I need to do is going to tire my hamstrings,” he said.
Behind him, young Gift Leotlela finished fourth.
Leotlela and Clarence Munyai are under-20s, yet have achieved Olympic qualifying standards in the 200m.
That means five SA men have qualified in that event alone, although there’s only space for three in Rio.
Malesela Senona and Sokwakhana Zazini are among SA’s under-18 stars.
“There’s a lot of talent,” said Kriel, who coaches Leotlela and the other youngsters at the Tuks academy in Pretoria. “I’m working now on statistics showing the emergence of African sprinters in South Africa.
“Five years ago on the all-time list [there were few], now they’re flooding the list in youth, junior and also in senior. If you compare the SA all-time lists 10 years ago and now, it’s two different lists. I’m just working on the 100m at the moment.”
This new wave in SA sprinting is a boost for transformation. In the 100m and 200m finals at the under-18 SA championships earlier this year, there was only one white kid, said Kriel.
SA sprinters are catching up with the world.