Doctor Know: Who would miss golden opportunity like this?

Success breeds success. History is littered with examples where one athlete's breakthrough performance and success inspires the next generation to imitate, rather than imagine their own journey to world-class performance.

It is happening right now in athletics, where Akani Simbine and Wayde van Niekerk have shown the way, and are being followed by the most exciting crop of young sprinters this country has ever produced.

In such a situation, those running a sport could do worse than to get out of the way and "let the magic happen". They should facilitate excitement and inspiration at every opportunity.

Unfortunately, Athletics SAhas taken a different road.

Last week Van Niekerk's agent, Peet van Zyl, described ASA as a "bunch of clowns". I felt Van Zyl was a little harsh. On clowns, that is, who at least plan ahead and rehearse a script to deliberately make us laugh.

I'm not sure ASA has any foresight or plan to make us anything, except extremely disappointed.

In this instance, the disappointment arises because ASA, in its wisdom, scheduled the National Track and Field Championships on the same weekend as the IAAF World Relay Championships in the Bahamas.

That means our best sprinters, in theory, will be sent to the Caribbean, instead of facing each other in what is possibly the most anticipated race in South African athletics history.

Between Van Niekerk, Simbine, Anaso Jobodwana, Henricho Bruintjies, Thando Roto and Gift Letlela, we have six world-class athletes who actually want to race one another. I can't stress how rare and valuable this is to a sport.

Add to this the relatively thin air in Potchefstroom, and this race could well produce four or five sub 10-second performances, which would make it one of the highest quality races in the world.

That all of this could happen in front of South African fans increasingly aware of the rise of local athletes on the world stage is reason enough to tear your hair out at the poor, inflexible planning that may yet deny us the spectacle.

ASA defended the decision with a convoluted justification that it is not in the business of preparing athletes for the SA Championships, because for those athletes identified to represent South Africa in the Bahamas, it "is not important. The country comes first before the small competitions like this." Thus said the president of ASA.

Something was lost in his explanation - what he is trying to say is that the success of our very best athletes matters more on the global stage than the local one, and that's true. But what's foolish here is that it did not need to be a Sophie's Choice, a case of one or the other.

The dates for a global event are set far enough in advance that ASA could be flexible, recognising the pot of gold it is sitting on, and move the SA Championships two weeks earlier.

That would allow huge hype in the build-up to the sprint events, plus the added incentive that the best performers would be selected to race for South Africa in the Bahamas. A dream scenario.

This was more than most a situation where we could all have had our cake, and eaten it too. A win for the public, a win for ASA (which is desperately in need of revenue) and a win for the athletes, who have been bantering on Twitter for weeks with the campaign #fillupPotch.

It's incredibly frustrating that we may, instead, all lose. One night would not make or break the performance and financial health of the sport in South Africa, but when you should be leveraging the success of your assets, it's extraordinary that you'd do anything but bend over backwards to facilitate the hype and race.

#fillupPotch may yet happen. Van Zyl intimated that some of the athletes would defy ASA and choose the South African champs over the world relay event. That would make for an interesting political response and even more negative publicity (think of how a sponsor would interpret this for one example of fallout).

A clown show without the laughs, however it's viewed.