Boardroom decisions scupper swimming Olympic dreams
● Not even the gleam of Pieter Coetzé’s 200m backstroke bronze could camouflage the shattered Olympic dreams of his counterparts in artistic swimming and water polo, their hopes discarded in the boardroom.
Erin Gallagher ended fourth in the women’s 50m butterfly last night and warhorse Chad Le Clos, a former two-time world champion in the 100m butterfly, ended fifth.
Coetzé has another medal opportunity in the 50m backstroke today, the final day of the world aquatics championships in Doha, as do Lara van Niekerk in the 50m breaststroke, where she ended third two years ago, and Matthew Sates in the 400m individual medley.
The men’s and women’s medley relay teams are looking to book their tickets to Paris today, but for the artistic duet of Laura Strugnell and Jessica Hayes-Hill — the selffunded athletes driven by passion — it’s over.
The Sunday Times has learned they were sent home before their competition for disciplinary reasons.
It seems the dispute boiled over after they were not allowed to spend meaningful time with their own coach, who had flown to Doha on their dime.
Neither of the coaches selected by Swimming SA (SSA) had worked with Strugnell, a Tokyo veteran, and Hayes-Hill, the country’s strongest artistic combination who finished 28th at the world championships last year — a best-ever result in an Olympic artistic discipline.
Sources claim the pair ignored team rules and misled team management, presumably to try to spend time with their coach.
Sisy Wang, who had been brought in several weeks earlier to assist Strugnell and Hayes-Hill with their routine, had posted on Instagram that she had been refused access to the swimmers. “What can stress the athletes even more at the world champs?” she asked in one post.
“Threaten them to swim unprepared events otherwise it’s a $500 fine. Provide them with coaches that don’t know their routine at all and also all the expenses must by covered by the athletes. Forbid their own coaches to coach them and also forbid them from appearing at the pool and hotel where the athletes are.”
In another post, Wang — who did not have accreditation for the competition — wrote: “These experiences are unreal, unheard of, and the worst that I have ever experienced when it comes to political plays in synchro.”
SSA, which does not talk about disciplinary matters in public, ceded the Olympic spot earned by the national women’s water polo team in Doha as the top-placed (and only) African team.
Late last year, the national federation imposed Olympic qualifying standards tougher than those set by World Aquatics on the smaller aquatic disciplines needing to qualify on continental standards.
Their justification was that they wanted to improve standards, although swimming is a code where the athletes are strict amateurs and receive no support.
Most members of the SA team to Doha had to contribute R30,000 each to participate.
The two water polo teams needed to finish in the top 12. The women, who achieved a best-ever 13th in Fukuoka last year, ended 14th. The men’s side ended last in 16th.
These championships, held at an unusual time of year, have delivered weak performances in the pool, especially many of the top competitors, including Tatjana Schoenmaker, opting to give it a miss.
The 2023 world champs in Fukuoka saw champions in 16 events going faster than the Tokyo Olympics.
By last night only three gold medallists — all in individual events — had bettered times from the Games. Similarly, by last night, 18 of the winning times posted in Doha would not have made the podium in Fukuoka last year.
For South Africa, it is clear that swimmers could be in for a hard time at the Olympics. Coetzé still has much to work on and even Schoenmaker could find more competition in the 100m and 200m breaststroke.