Let's support home-grown sporting heroes for 2022 Games

Disabled swimmer Shareen Sapiro grabbed her chance with both hands at the King’s Park pool in Durban on Thursday.

Recovering from two shoulder surgeries, and having not raced competitively since 2013, she needed to get herself back onto the governing body’s database. 

So she swam a 100m backstroke time trial to try achieve a qualifying time for the IPC world championships in Glasgow in July. 

And she cracked it with some four seconds to spare.

There’s no guarantee the IPC will even accept her time (apparently it takes much red tape to do these things), but the worst case scenario is that  her preparation for Rio 2016 is well under way.

Yet her feat yesterday was appreciated by fewer than 10 people. 

There should have been hundreds more spectators cheering Sapiro on - after all, this is the SA national championships, where the able-bodied stars like Chad Le Clos and Cameron van der Burgh race alongside disabled heroes like Kevin Paul and Sapiro, a Paralympic medallist at the 2008 and 2012 Games. 

This place should be packed every session, and the fact that it isn’t should be of concern to Swimming SA (SSA) as well as the Durban 2022 bid committee.

There are just seven years and three months to go to the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony, and somehow public interest needs to be drummed up.  

Athletics SA (ASA) president Aleck Skhosana popped in during the first session on Monday, but he had come for a TV interview. 

He wasn’t here to bounce around ideas about the way forward with his swimming counterpart, Jace Naidoo. 

The two federations are struggling financially and they somehow need to revitalise themselves. 

SSA can’t afford to fund the full team that will go to the (able-bodied) world championships in Russia in August, but this has become the norm since SSA lost their main sponsor in 2012.

Debt-ridden ASA is in a far more precarious position, being at serious risk of losing its Houghton building. 

But the promise of the Commonwealth Games coming to South Africa - at least on paper - offers them a golden opportunity to devise salvage plans. 

With Durban being the only runner in this race, getting the Games should be a formality (unless King Zwelithini takes a dislike to the evaluation committee members who are due here later this month).

Surely sponsors can be enticed into helping to create home-grown heroes for 2022? Think how many of them are around 15 years old at moment. 

Maybe it’s time the Cinderella sports start working together. 

For example, the SA track and field championships in Stellenbosch clash with the national swimming champs, falling on the last two days of the gala later this week. 

The two events also overlapped last year. 

Why not rather try co-ordinate a more seamless schedule so athletics and swimming don’t have to compete for space and time in the media?

If they agree to do that, why not get more ambitious? Maybe they could bring a few more sports into this equation - from rowing and canoeing to boxing and gymnastics - and then promote their combined national championships as a South African Olympics.

We certainly have the stars to grow public interest, from Le Clos and sprinter Anaso Jobodwana to canoeing’s Olympic bronze medallist Bridgitte Hartley and world champion rowers John Smith and James Thompson. 

South Africa lacks an Olympic culture, and being named as the 2022 Games host will provide a good platform to try change that. 

Sapiro took her opportunity in her time trial; hopefully the administrators can match her in the boardroom.​