Board re-election brings athletics stability

A LEVEL of stability has set in at Athletics SA (ASA) after its board was re-elected at the federation’s quadrennial general meeting in Johannesburg over the weekend.

ASA president Aleck Skhosana and his vice-president, Dr Harold Adams, were nominated unopposed.

The previous board served a two-year term following an intervention by the IAAF after the previous board reached a stalemate with former president James Evans.

Skhosana said the board managed to “steady the ship” but they admitted there were still outstanding issues to address.

“The mandate remains to restore the pride of athletics to its former glory and in time make it even better than we have in the past two years,” Skhosana said.

“Our focus will be to ensure our athletes, coaches, managers, technical officials, the public, sponsors and our partners, including government, remain our most important stakeholders.”

Skhosana said ASA’s mandate was to develop and nurture talent that would ultimately produce medals at major international competitions such as the World Championships and Olympic Games.

“We are number one in Africa in all the three age categories, we are ranked number seven in the IAAF Youth, we are ranked fifth, and we ranked 22nd in the IAAF Junior category, IAAF World Junior Championships and fifth in Rio 2016 out of 207 participating countries,” Skhosana said.

He said mediocrity would no longer be tolerated. “People expect South Africa to return with more medals from next year’s World Championships in London and Tokyo 2020. They expect more when South Africa host the 2022 Commonwealth Games,” he said.

“If athletics is not right, football, rugby and cricket would not be right. The reason is simple; athletics is the mother of all sports.”

Skhosana added that increased emphasis would be placed on support for coaches.

ASA seemed to have learned from its mistakes from the last few years with its team selections and failure to develop relay teams. The federation was developing uniform selection criteria for all major events.

The country’s failure to send relay teams to the Rio Olympics has finally forced the federation to create more opportunities for teams to qualify.

Skhosana said the country would for the first time send teams to the World Relays in the Bahamas next year. South Africa did not participate in the first two championships in 2014 and 2015.

“We have plans to assemble a formidable team,” said Skhosana.