SA Olympic team’s plans ‘on track’
SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee president Barry Hendricks says that all their plans and logistics are on track and that there’s huge excitement in the team with only five days before the 2020 Olympic Games kickoff on Friday.
The games will be held in Tokyo, Japan, after they were postponed from last year due to the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. They will end on August 8.
Hendricks said the majority of Team South Africa were already in the Land of the Rising Sun, with only a few athletes yet to make their 20-hour flight to Tokyo.
The SA Olympic Games boss said they would only talk about the number of medals they were expecting once everyone was in Japan because athletes were still pulling out due to positive Covid-19 tests.
“I will make a pronouncement on the expectations next week. This is because even today [Thursday] one athlete dropped out of the team due to Covid-19, so we want to make sure that the final team is in Tokyo, then we can predict who our medal hopefuls are.”
At the last Olympic Games in Brazil in 2016, Team SA returned home with 10 medals.