The great fall of China
With very few exceptions, SA athletes punched below their weight in Beijing
LOOK beneath the glittering performances of Wayde van Niekerk and Anaso Jobodwana at the Bird’s Nest stadium this week, and you’ll see a South African team that failed to deliver.
The 34 athletes flew to the world championships on a cloud of optimism, the consensus being that they were the country’s greatest track and field ensemble, at least since readmission.
But their combined feats here have been less than ordinary, even by SA’s standards.
SA has never scored fewer than three top-eight finishes in 11 world championships since 1993.
By the end of last night, however, the class of 2015 had registered exactly three — Van Niekerk, Jobodwana and Wenda Nel, who ended seventh in the women’s 400m hurdles.
Sunette Viljoen should lift it to four in the javelin tonight.
But that’s still lower than two years ago in Moscow, where there were five top-eights, although only one medal, Johan Cronje’s 1 500m bronze.
SA has averaged 4.45 top- eights since 1993, and the best showing to date was nine in Paris 2003.
“With a few very notable exceptions I think we have punched below our weight,” said Frank Dick, the consultant coach tasked with ensuring that SA’s medal hopefuls for the 2016 Rio Olympics perform at their peak.
“My pre-Games calculation was that we had potential for 11 athletes to fight in finals.”
Khotso Mokoena also made a final here, ending ninth in the triple jump.
There was a feeling within the camp that arriving just four days before competition started last Saturday was insufficient time for athletes to combat the effects of jet lag.
A training camp to acclima- tise to the time zone and brutal heat could have been beneficial, though the rocky finances of debt-saddled Athletics SA (ASA) probably offer an acceptable excuse.
But the federation was found wanting in other areas, such as refusing to withdraw Jobodwana from the 100m heats last Saturday. He had wanted to focus on the 200m, and sources say he asked at the first team meeting here not to run the shorter sprint. In the end, he was forced to compete, though he was disqualified for a false start.
SA team leader Pieter Lourens had explained that “in principle” withdrawals had to be made before the team had arrived in Beijing. But a competition organiser here said withdrawals were possible up until the deadline for final confirmation of entries — 9am on the day before each event.
Management, comprising three ASA board members, also saw fit to try to enter a 4x400m relay team only after they’d arrived in Beijing, but unsuccessfully.
Communication between ASA and the athletes was also lacking. “I sent out two messages trying to figure out if we were going to have a relay and I never got any answers until we got here,” Jobodwana admitted af- ter yesterday’s 4x100m disaster.
The SA team had one doctor and a single physiotherapist; the 33 Italians here, still without a medal before last night, had three doctors and four physios.
Dick, employed by the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), said federations needed to do “a thorough debriefing” looking at all performance-related aspects, from athletes to decision-makers.
“Certainly we will be doing just that,” added Dick, though he was not asked to comment on any of these issues specifically.
He was confident there was time to fix mistakes before next year.
“We must learn how to get it right now to avoid persistently wasting energy trying to put it right.”
With Van Niekerk winning the 400m gold and Jobodwana the 200m bronze, some might think this is the start of a golden era in SA sprinting, but not necessarily.
When SA’s swimmers won the 4x100m freestyle relay at the 2004 Olympics, weren’t they supposed to herald a flood of future freestylers?
But not one swimmer was quick enough to even compete in the 100m freestyle at the aquatics world championships early this month.
Likewise, where were the high-jumpers after 2003 world champions Hestrie Cloete and Jacques Freitag? Or the polevaulters after Okkert Brits?
The reality is that most of SA’s sport successes have been random; based on individual talent, not created.
If Durban is named host of the 2022 Commonwealth Games on Wednesday — as is expected — that has the potential to offer SA sport a shot at salvation.
The goal, presumably, will be to compete for top spot on the medals table, which means codes will need to implement meaningful high performance and youth development programmes.
Someone like Roger Barrow, the mastermind of SA Rowing’s successes, would be ideal as an uber-director, overseeing the
Arriving just four days before competition started last Saturday was insufficient time ASA saw fit to try to enter a 4x400m relay team only after they’d arrived in Beijing, but unsuccessfully
process.
SA sport needs to be driven by professionals, not politicians. As executives, they get to hire and fire the magic-makers, and attend cocktail parties.
Sascoc’s desire to send a fullstrength team to the African Games in Brazzaville next month is almost certainly not based on sports science.
A few athletes here said they were reluctant to go, shaking their heads as they explained it clashed with the short rest period they would enjoy before embarking on their training programmes for Rio.