‘Speedy’ officials might have sunk SA water polo Paris Games hopes
● Mystery surrounds the lightning-fast exclusion of the national men’s and women’s water polo teams from the Paris Olympics.
Both sides qualified by virtue of being the only African outfits at the recent world championships in Doha, but they fell short of the selection standards set by Swimming South Africa (SSA).
SSA had wanted them to place no lower than 12th out of 16 teams, but the women, 12th at the previous showpiece in Fukuoka, ended 14th and the men 15th.
The players had barely dried off when World Aquatics (WA) announced the provisional list of Paris water polo qualifiers, with South Africa omitted as a result of a process that short-circuited the official qualification system.
Anyone who read WA’s procedure for water polo — published with the approval of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) — would have expected that two invitations be sent to the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) which, in turn, would have declined them because of the SSA selection policy.
Water polo invitations were scheduled to be issued to national Olympic committees this past Friday, with March 22 being the deadline to respond.
But that didn’t happen for South Africa and everyone seems reluctant to explain what went down in Doha.
SSA president Alan Fritz offered no insight when asked this at a recent press conference: “The decision was that the qualification would be 12th place at the champs. It wasn’t achieved, the decision was taken.”
WA shed no light, with a spokesperson saying in an email: “Please note that World
Aquatics strictly follows the official qualification process that can be found [at a URL].”
However, the URL linked to the same WA qualification system that clearly wasn’t followed in this case.
The IOC referred queries to WA.
Someone jumped the gun and everyone appears reluctant to explain who and how.
If World Aquatics was merely applying
SSA’s selection policy at source, then they might as well have booted marathon swimmer Amica de Jager as well.
She qualified for Paris as the first African in the women’s 10km swim, but she is not likely to go because she ended 27th and not 20th, as required by SSA for Olympic selection. The Sunday Times understands that in her case an invitation was sent to Sascoc which, based on SSA’s policy, will be declined.
It could be argued that it made no difference whether the water polo teams were sidelined in Doha or a month later by Sascoc.
But it actually might have.
Sascoc have no objection to national federations toughening up Olympic selection criteria as long as there has been consultation — and here is the crux.
SSA’s athletes’ commission chair Chad Ho told the Sunday Times he had signed off the selection policy, which was formalised in mid-November, but he admitted that it had not been discussed by his committee.
The symmetry of water polo and diving needing to finish 12th and open-water and artistic swimming 20th also suggested a lack of interrogation of the standards.
These meant vastly different hurdles for different disciplines with diving needing to make the top 23% in Doha, open water the top 26%, artistic swimming the top 50% and water polo the top 75%.
It’s also questionable whether it was fair to impose these standards less than a year before the Paris Games and so soon before the qualifying event.
There might have been grounds for water polo to argue their way to Paris.
But thanks to trigger-happy officials in Doha we’ll never know.