Handicap for SA athletes

05 February 2015 - 02:07 By David Isaacson
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David Isaacson
David Isaacson

South Africa's track and field athletes have done well in the past couple of years, suggesting they will be a rich source of medals at the Olympics next year.

They could even surpass the code's best haul since South Africa returned from isolation in 1992 - three medals at Sydney 2000.

The 2016 hopefuls include Cornel Fredericks (400m hurdles), Wayde van Niekerk (400m), Godfrey Mokoena (long jump and triple jump), Zarck Visser (long jump), Anaso Jobodwana (200m) and the men's 4x100m relay team.

Also in the mix are Rushwal Samaai (long jump), Sunette Viljoen (javelin), Victor Hogan (discus), Johan Cronje (1500m) and veterans like Caster Semenya (800m) and LJ van Zyl (400m hurdles), if they can escape the funks they've been in the past couple of years.

That's an impressive pool 18 months out from the Olympics.

A crucial part of preparing for the 2016 Games will be competing at the World Championships in Beijing later this year.

But it seems Athletics SA might make it harder than necessary for our athletes, especially the younger ones, to get there - judging by its draft qualifying standards, which will be discussed at a board meeting on Monday.

The IAAF, the athletics world governing body, scrapped A and B standards in favour of a single criterion; A was tough and B was for promising athletes trying to graduate to that level of excellence.

Athletics South Africa have drawn up A and B qualifying standards - which is fine in itself - but the potential problem is that in 42 of 43 individual track and field events (22 men's and 21 women's), its B standards are as tough or tougher than the IAAF's standards. Only the men's 100m has a B standard (10.25sec) that is lower than the IAAF standard (10.16).

The draft standards won't hurt South Africa's best athletes, but they could dent the World Championship aspirations, and therefore the Olympic hopes, of the younger ones.

Pieter Lourens, chairman of ASA's track and field commission, declined to explain the standards. He did say: "The vision is on 2016."

Perhaps the draft standards will change by the time the board meets, or maybe there is a wonderful logic to ASA's qualifying standards which, once explained, will lift the fog of confusion.

What ASA still needs to explain is whether it intends to use the A and B standards in the traditional sense, which is to exclude B-standard athletes if there are A-standard qualifications.

In other words, if three long-jumpers clear the IAAF's 8.10m standard, all three could compete - according to the IAAF.

But if, say, Mokoena jumps ASA's A-standard 8.20m and Visser and Samaai leap 8.19m, then will only Mokoena go?

If the answer is yes, that's a problem. No South African athlete - Visser, Samaai nor anyone else - should be excluded by selection policy.

ASA needs to blood as many talented youngsters as possible, or risk bleeding the talent pool dry.

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