South Africa’s top sprinters are still waiting to learn if there are plans to qualify the 4x100m relay team for the 2016 Olympics‚ but Athletics SA (ASA) say they are busy drawing up a blueprint. The foursome is considered a realistic medal hope‚ featuring the likes of world championship 200m bronze medallist Anaso Jobodwana as well as Akani Simbine and Henricho Bruintjies‚ who both share the 9.97sec SA record.Relays need time to prepare‚ but the SA team could start working together only on the day of their heat at the world championships in Beijing — and disaster struck at the first handover where Bruintjies failed to get the baton to Jobodwana.“Honestly‚ I’ve kind of given up on the relay‚” Simbine said at his home base in Pretoria this week.“Not given up running in the relay‚ just given up focusing on the relay and trying to get a team together because it’s not in our hands.”He admitted the lack of planning around the relay had been “super-frustrating”.“If we had trained as a relay team going into world champs we could have got into the final and we could have actually won a medal‚ looking at what happened in the final.“For me … they see that the potential is there and they actually need to make sure they do something about the potential and not let it go to waste.”Bruintjies‚ who like Simbine made the 100m semifinals in China‚ said the relay was also off his radar.“There’s no plans at all. I haven’t heard anything since the day we dropped the baton at world champs.“For the relay I have no idea. No one told us anything about it and there’s no funding for us to go on camps. So at the moment we’re really not sure what’s going to happen so we’re just focusing on ourselves as individuals.”Contacted for comment on Thursday‚ ASA president Aleck Skhosana said the federation would appoint a manager and a coach to oversee the teams attempting to qualify for the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.He said the 1600m race would require both 400m hurdlers‚ LJ van Zyl and Cornel Fredericks‚ as well as 400m world champion Wayde van Niekerk.But the trick will be co-ordinating the training programmes of the athletes‚ some of whom are based in the US‚ while others are travelling in and out of Europe for competitions and camps in the northern hemisphere summer.To qualify for the Games in August‚ the teams must be ranked in the top eight in the world come July (excluding the eight teams that qualified automatically at the World Relays last year).“At the beginning of the year [the sprint coach] will contact the athletes … We will send our teams everywhere‚ even invite teams to South Africa‚ like Nigeria and Ivory Coast.“We could even go to SA champs to do it — we have a multiplicity of options to make sure they’re confident passing the baton in the toughest of conditions.”The one school of thought is that the team should make its bid in the US early in the summer season‚ when they will be spoiled for choice with races. – TMG Digital..