Rankings are what’ll count for Games
ATHLETICS SOUTH AFRICA chief executive Richard Stander has encouraged athletes to target the highest possible ranking to secure selection for next year’s Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
According to Stander, only 100 individual athletes per country would be allowed to participate.
At the beginning of September ASA named a 63-member preparation squad.
Sascoc president, Gideon Sam, said they will give clarity by Monday but his understanding was that each country was limited to 300 athletes across both individual and team events.
“Ezera Shabangu (Sascoc high-performance manager) is there (in Australia) and she is coming back on Monday with a full set of information in terms of inclusion and numbers,” Sam said.
SA returned from the IAAF World Championships in London with its best medal haul, winning three gold, a silver, and two bronze and finished third overall on the medal’s table.
“We’ve stressed to the coaches that the criteria is one thing, it is only a guide, it is only there to give direction,” Stander said.
“They should be focussed on where their athletes are compared to the world rankings or in terms of the Commonwealth Games rankings’ list. If they don’t focus on that, you have people complaining about their athletes not making the team and they use all sorts of excuses.”
The athletics season has already started giving athletes an opportunity to post qualifying times and distances until the deadline of 31 December.
“The athletes will have to position themselves as well as possible to the top of the rankings list when we present the team to Sascoc so that we don’t have a swimmer filling the place of an athlete,” Stander said.