Long-term goal is Sascoc game
THE initial squad of 112 athletes named yesterday to represent South Africa at the 2012 Olympics has been selected with an eye on securing medals – but Sascoc is also looking towards a more long-term goal of Rio in 2016.
The 112 names announced at Olympic House in Johannesburg yesterday are substantially more than expected when the stringent qualifying standards were announced in 2009, about the same time Sascoc president Gideon Sam spoke about the quest to secure 12 medals in 2012.
The three teams in the squad – the 18-woman soccer and two 16-person hockey sides – contribute to the large number of athletes heading for London, while a contingent of 54 support staff that includes coaches, managers, doctors, physios and even a bicycle mechanic and horse vet, mean 164 people will be on the team plane – so far.
The reality is that this engorged team is unlikely to come close to Sam’s over-optimistic 12-medal goal, but the athletes named yesterday, and the late qualifiers who will be added on July 4, should return with more than the lone silver from 2008.
The Beijing squad came back with an embarrassing lack of riches, with only long jumper Khotso Mokoena, who has qualified for London but missed the deadline for yesterday’s announcement, able to win a silver from the long jump.
In this year’s crop there are a few genuine medal contenders and even a few who can go to London with a realistic hope of striking gold.
Athletics and swimming have produced most of the medals since South Africa’s readmission to the Olympic family in 1992 and Sascoc are expecting that trend to continue.
The top medal hopeful is surely Cameron van der Burgh, who is in awesome form and well on target to produce some medal-winning swims. Chad le Clos has fast-tracked himself as a contender, but it remains to be seen if he has smoothed out all the rough edges sufficiently to be able to deliver on the world’s biggest sporting stage.
Two of the awesome foursome who won 4x100m gold in Athens, Roland Schoeman and Darian Townsend, will be back in the pool, with Schoeman, a triple medal winner from Athens in 2004, competing at his fourth Olympics. He joins a select club of South African four-time Olympians that is limited to Hendrik Ramaala and Ryk Neethling – Schoeman’s gold-winning teammate from Athens who will also be in London, but as a TV analyst.
Controversial 2009 world 800m champion Caster Semenya should get a medal, while 400m hurdler LJ van Zyl and javelin thrower Sunette Viljoen will be hoping to add Olympic metal to their World Champs and Commonwealth medals.
In the other sports, mountain biker Burry Stander and canoeist Bridgitte Hartley are medal hopefuls, while triathlete Richard Murray, a former two-time duathlon world champion, has placed himself in the frame with some good performances which have lifted him to fourth in the world rankings.
While winning medals is the primary reason for the team’s trip to London, a secondary purpose is obvious with the long list of youngsters included in the line-up. The likes of young contenders like Murray and Le Clos could fulfil both criteria, but a few other developing athletes, such as canoeist Tiffany Kruger, mountain biker Candice Neethling, walker Marc Mundell and shottist Alistair Davis have every chance of using the experience gained in London to succeed in Rio.
“The team is bigger than we expected initially,” said Sascoc chief executive Tubby Reddy at the announcement. “But we have 16 different sports types and all those athletes have satisfied the criteria.
“All of them are not going to win medals but the others will be prepared for 2016. It is critical to build for 2016 from now. When we announced in 2009 we were aiming for 12 in 2012 it was already too late – you do not prepare an Olympic medallist in three years. The ones we are focusing on now for medals were already in the mix before 2009.”
And Sam Ramsamy backed that up with a perfect example of how long-term planning is needed:
“Preparing for 2016 is a longterm goal and we have to work on that… a good example is in 1992. We took a young girl to Barcelona and nobody knew Penny Heyns, but in 1996 she got us two gold medals.”
Now the 2012 crop just has to find somebody to emulate the golden girl from Atlanta.