Swimming SA sinks water polo players’ Olympic hopes
Sports body tells men’s and women’s water polo teams that they’re not good enough to go to Paris, even though they qualified for the Olympics as Africa’s best
outh Africa’s elite water polo players were left gobsmacked this week when they learnt they would not be going to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Swimming South Africa (SSA) has withdrawn both the men’s and women’s water polo teams from the team to Paris because they are not realistic medal contenders. If that is the criterion, then 90% of Team South Africa should not be going to the Olympics.
To make matters worse, the players only heard through social media – not official channels – that they wouldn’t be going to Paris.
This comes after they received barely any support from SSA in the form of training camps and funding.
SSA made the decision to remove the water polo teams from Olympic consideration because of their performances at the recent World Aquatics Championships in Doha, Qatar, which ended on 18 February.
The women’s team finished 14th out of 16 sides while the men finished 15th.
According to SSA, a minimum 12th-place finish was required. Instead, Romania and Canada will take the men’s and women’s places at the Olympic Games.
“For us to accept a continental slot, they had to achieve a top-12 ranking [in Doha] and they did not achieve a top-12 ranking,” SSA chief executive Shaun Adriaanse told Daily Maverick.
Set up to fail
SJust what SSA does to help prepare the water polo teams – other than sending out communiqués – is questionable.
One of the national water polo players Daily Maverick spoke to, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that since the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, last July, both teams had only a single training camp. That was in December last year.
That training camp, held in Gqeberha, doubled up as a selection camp for the World Aquatics Championships, which kicked off at the start of February.
The team was announced two weeks ahead of the 2024 Championships and trained together for the first time, for three days, in Johannesburg.
“The squads were finalised last year so they know more or less who will be in the team. So
I think they had adequate preparation,”
Adriaanse said, without elaborating on that “adequate preparation”.
The players could not train as a team, according to one player, as all training camps must be approved by SSA before going ahead.
The players selected for the
World Champs had to pay around
R20,000 from their own pockets, on short notice, for flights and accommodation in Doha, as the sport remains largely self-funded.
In Doha, Team South Africa shared two physios – one between
10 swimmers and another between
both water polo teams, the diving team and the synchronised swimming team (about 50 people).
“It was like being set up to fail,” a national player told Daily Maverick.
Finding out via social media
Players from both teams have claimed that they found out from a social media post by Canada’s water polo team – who will replace the South African women’s team – that they will not be going to the Olympics.
Daily Maverick has independently confirmed that water polo’s technical committee was informed that the men’s and women’s teams needed to finish at least 12th in Doha to go to the Olympics.
But according to several players, this was an aboutturn after the women’s water polo team achieved 12th place in Fukuoka last year and were under the impression that their ticket to Paris was secure.
According to Adriaanse, there is a certain “standard” SSA wants to maintain at the Olympics. Again, it raises the question of what SSA has actually done to assist players and teams to reach this standard.
The men’s team finished 12th at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics while the women’s team placed 10th.
It was the first time that the women’s team participated and a first for the men’s team, post-apartheid. Although the water polo teams have almost zero chance of winning a medal, sending teams to the Olympics is also about exposing athletes to the highest levels of competition. If being a realistic medal contender were the main criterion, South Africa would send a much smaller delegation.
At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Team South Africa included 179 athletes in 19 sports. South Africa returned with only three medals – two for Tatjana Schoenmaker in swimming and one for Bianca Buitendag in surfing.
That means only 1.12% of athletes South Africa sent to the previous Olympic Games came back with medals. This year the expectation isn’t much higher.
The water polo teams are the best in Africa, and the decision not to send them to the Games is peculiar.
Daily Maverick asked the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) whether it supported or endorsed the decision to withdraw the water polo teams. Sascoc, the umbrella body that represents South Africa at the International Olympic Committee, took no responsibility, saying the matter fell under SSA’S jurisdiction.