South Africa failing athletes: iLIVE

South Africa has over the years failed to produce top athletes who can compete in international stages and bring medals home particularly at the Olympics.

Gymnastics, swimming, football, and track and field are not on par with our American, Jamaicans or Germans and all of this is due to the lack of development at school level.

The department of Sports and Recreation, SASCOC, USASA, SAFA and SAFA must all  shoulder the blame. Having attended a rural area in Sesobe next to Rustenburg, I can safely say there are no facilities to develop the young ones and in the Gauteng Townships where facilities are available, there are no skilled individuals to cultivate talent.

I often find drug dealers, tavern owners and strip club owners more effective in talent management than SAFA and ASA. Maybe that could be one of the reasons we lost greats like Jabu Pule and Mbulelo Mabizela to alcohol and substance abuse.

The solution is for those mentioned to jointly appoint development coaches and make sports a required subject to matriculate or even better instil sport from primary school level, surely it can't be that difficult since the much criticised apartheid government was very good in sport management even in their much hated black schools.

While drug  and substance abuse is on the rise in our country, athlete development declines faster than the American economy.