Swimmers set pace in C’wealth Games
● South Africa’s sports bosses have created an anomaly with more swimmers posting qualifying standards for the 2018 Commonwealth Games than track and field athletes.
This should be an impossibility. For one, track and field traditionally offers more spots than swimming, with 46 events to 38 at the Gold Coast showpiece from April 4-15.
Also, SA won more medals in athletics than swimming at the last Olympics as well as their respective world championships this year.
There’s a glitch in the Mzansi matrix and it’s not for the first time either.
The last occasion was ahead of the 2012 London Games, when the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) got overly tough and demanded all competitors do qualifying standards twice. That hurt the athletes more than the swimmers.
This time Sascoc want top-10 Commonwealth rankings, which should have resulted in at least 25 athletes and six swimmers.
But operating independently of each other, Swimming SA made qualification easier and Athletics SA more difficult, resulting in 29 “qualified” swimmers versus 24 athletes.
For all the raw emotions the swimmers displayed after beating qualifying marks in Durban this past week, heartbreak will follow for many. At least they know that.
“With so many people qualifying they’ll have to cut the team down,” said one swimmer with a qualifying time.
SA has 99 spots for most individual codes at Gold Coast.
Swimming won 12 medals in 2014
Cameron van der Burgh and Chad Le Clos will obviously get the early nod, as should Ayrton Sweeney, 24, and Brad Tandy, 26, both with No 3 rankings. They are also proof that swimmers can blossom late.
So what about 22-year-old Ryan Coetzee, who finally landed his first senior qualifying marks this week? He flew out from the University of Tennessee just for this gala. Does one pick him or someone younger, like promising 15-year-old Luan Grobbelaar?
One swimming administrator says they want to convince Sascoc that selection shouldn’t be just about Gold Coast medals, but also building for the 2020 Olympics.
He believes that some other sporting codes vying for those 99 spots should get a smaller slice of the cake.
Swimming was one of 10 codes that made the 2014 Commonwealth podium for SA, bagging 12 medals ahead of athletics (nine), lawn bowls (seven) and judo (four).
But other sports bodies will fight too. Athletics, for one, have stated they want Picture: Gallo Images extra sprinters to compete in all relays.
Most sports scientists will tell you SA’s unified battle plan for the Tokyo Games in 2020 — incorporating Gold Coast 2018 — should have been drawn up a long time ago.
That’s why these numbers don’t add up.