SA athletes warned on training return
● Track and field coaches are warning that SA’s leading athletes need to return to full training as soon as possible or risk a poor 2021 season and Tokyo Olympics.
A caution came from Werner Prinsloo, mentor of ace sprinter Akani Simbine, who continued working on grass fields this week while his Tuks athletics club was shuttered.
Tuks have reopened gymnastics, golf, cricket, swimming and rowing, and their AmaTuks football team was hoping to return to training yesterday. But the university is still awaiting government approval to open its athletics facilities to the likes of Simbine and the majority of his SA 4x100m relay teammates as well as hurdling prospects Zeney van der Walt and Soks Zazini.
“If they don’t open training — tracks and gyms — by August, we’re stuffed,” said Prinsloo. “We’re going to have a bad, bad season next year. Three months of no proper training is a long time for any athlete.”
Prinsloo would like Simbine, the world No 4 in the 100m, to take part in some Diamond League meets later this year.
Athletics SA (ASA) decided against submitting a resumption plan to the sport ministry, saying safety protocols would be insufficient to protect athletes, coaches and officials. But that meant there was no consolidated proposal for a return to training. ASA told athletes and coaches to make their own plans to train at their normal tracks.
ASA president Aleck Skhosana said he didn’t know how stadium managers could secure the necessary government approvals to reopen. “We don’t own stadiums. I don’t know if they must get it from local government or the sport ministry.”
He was adamant ASA had made the right decision. “Do you value losing critical time [to prepare] or do you value life?”
Skhosana pointed out that the exercise hours permitted by the government for the public also counted as training. “Athletes are training,” he insisted.
But one coach told the Sunday Times athletes were putting themselves at greater risk by training on the roads and on uneven surfaces like pavements and fields.
There is a strong feeling that ASA should have done more to facilitate the opening of stadiums for elite athletes, like most other sports bodies did for their athletes.
At least Free State University opened up its grass track on campus for the sole use of 400m king Wayde van Niekerk and longjumper Lynique Prinsloo.
And the Kenneth McArthur stadium in Potchefstroom, after careful negotiations with the city council, is open to a handful of select athletes, including distance runner Elroy Gelant, said Jean Verster, president of the provincial body there.
Verster, who coached Caster Semenya to the 2016 Olympic and 2017 world championship 800m gold medals, likened the effects of lockdown to an athlete out for 10 weeks because of injury.
“It’ll vary, but on average, if you miss 10 weeks — six weeks plus four weeks of rehab — it can take up to a year to get back to where you were before,” said Verster, who is also preparing athletes for the world cross-country championships in Australia in March next year.
The North West University’s athletics facilities were still shut, respected throws coach Terseus Liebenberg said.
Though athletes in technical events could suffer badly from lack of practice, Liebenberg pointed out that two of his javelin throwers had done well improvising their training on their family farms during lockdown.
Maggie le Roux’s training included weightlifting with tyres perched on either end of a barbell, and pulling and pushing a bakkie while doing push-ups in between.
Jo-Ane van Dyk had improved her strength.
“Everything has gone up,” said the javelin athlete.
Van Dyk is one of several SA hopefuls close to Olympic qualification standards, and they’ll all want to be in tip-top shape when the qualifying window reopens worldwide on December 1.