To coincide with President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation address on Thursday, here is a similarly themed, politically styled Sona for South African Olympic sport:Good evening, sanibonani, molweni, dumelang, goeie naand, lotshani, riperile, ndimadekwana.Compatriots,This year marks the 24th anniversary of South Africa's readmission into the global sporting community at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. We remember fondly the triumphs of those Games - Elana Meyer's post-silver medal victory lap with Ethiopia's Deratu Tulu remains an iconic Olympic moment, one that could have been the catalyst for South African athletes to take their place with the world's best after so many years of being denied the opportunity.It was only four years later that Penny Heyns became the first gold medallist of our rainbow nation, and Josia Thugwane brought the curtain down on those Atlanta Games by becoming our first black Olympic champion.In between came one of the greatest feel-good sporting triumphs the world has ever seen, when our nation united behind Nelson Mandela, Francois Pienaar and the Springboks to win rugby's World Cup.Then our boys, Bafana Bafana, conquered Africa, too. Those were days filled with opportunity and ambition, a nation of young boys and girls inspired to wear green and gold and to rise to the top step of the podium.Compatriots, with Rio only 172 days away, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on what has passed between those heady days and now, with special reference to the Olympic sports.We have unearthed Chad le Clos, who we hope will rise to the challenge of Michael Phelps to be one of the superstars of 2016. He is joined by Cameron van der Burgh, already an Olympic champion, and Chad Ho, a world champion.Our rowers shocked the world, and us, by conquering the highly resourced nations of Great Britain, Denmark and Australia in London 2012, despite the fact that we provide the bare minimum of support. We bask in their achievements as though we do give them our full support. Amandla!We can only imagine how successful we might be with a targeted increase in financial and intellectual support.We have done excellent work with our female athletes too. We qualified in women's football, hockey and rugby for the Rio Olympics. Yes, it is true that we will not send the hockey or rugby team, because our Olympic committee deems them so far behind the world that they have no realistic chances of challenging for a medal. This commendable strategic decision to not send 30 players and 10 coaching staff means more of our hard-working officials can travel and watch Usain win gold for a third time. Amandla!We do note with concern that our women seem to be falling further and further behind our men. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games, we had by far the most gender-skewed medal haul. We won 21 medals in swimming and athletics, 20 by our men (Amandla!), and one by a woman (hush). We have no strategy to resolve this, other than to hope we discover another Caster Semenya. To this end, we have many scouts in Limpopo.We have great hopes for our Sevens Blitzboks to return with a gold medal. Sevens being as unpredictable as it is, it would be folly to expect a medal, but we are assured that the Springboks have a divine right to win rugby matches, and choose to ignore that Sevens is quite a different game from fifteens (Fiji are good at Sevens?), so anything less will be viewed as failure. Nevertheless, that sport's Olympic debut may provide one of 2016's great moments.We have made other enormous strides since the last Olympics. The cost of hosting our annual sports awards has increased, peaking at, listen properly, R65-million in 2013. Our entire direct Olympic spending is less, but few who attend would dispute that it is money well spent.Compatriots, in short, we will go to Rio and win a handful of medals from an exceptional group of athletes. We look forward to celebrating them, and to enjoying the honourable minister's tweets from Rio.The state of the nation is indeed healthy...