JONATHAN JANSEN | As Africans showed at the Olympics, the race truly begins with government coughing up

What do the recent Olympics teach us about our African humanity? A lot.

Did you hear about the Nigerian cyclist whose country could not provide a bike for a race so she borrowed one from the German team?

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe tried desperately to deny that it sent seven athletes but 67 officials to Paris.

Not to be outdone, when one of South Africa’s athletes won a silver medal in the javelin competition, it emerged that the young woman’s family had to dig into their own pockets to enable the Potchefstroom graduate to compete in the games. Our minister of sport (and whatever), ever the showman, promised to reimburse every cent.

We qualified for a final because another team was disqualified — we ride our luck

As a continent we are disgraceful in the ways we treat our athletes. Notice how many Africans run for other countries? A Kenyan was not picked by her own nation but won gold for Bahrain in the 3,000m steeplechase, breaking the Olympic record in the process. Nigeria could not clean up its drug record with Olympic officialdom and so one of their hammer throwers left to compete for the US, walking away with a silver medal.

Then there is my favourite athlete of the current Games, Sifan Hassan, who left her native Ethiopia as a child refugee to run for the Netherlands, bagging gold in the women’s marathon among others in this and previous games.

The truth is Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, simply does not have a systematic plan to be competitive in the game-of-games, the Olympics. Yes, we took six medals (one gold, three silver, two bronze) placing us joint 44th among nations. (Well done, you amazing young people). But one university’s students won 39 medals in the Paris games, of which 12 were gold. Yes, that should put our national performance into blunt relief.

Ukraine is engaged in a full-out war with a superpower (Russia) and they got more medals than us (12, three of them gold). Ever heard of Uzbekistan? Well, they got eight and the tiny country of Norway (5.5-million people) outpaced us as well (eight).

So what’s wrong? You can’t as a country simply pitch up every four years and under the glamorous spotlight of the Olympics expect your athletes to suddenly perform. It is the hard, hard work in-between Paris and LA that will determine our medal haul in 2028.

But don’t hold your breath. Mzansi is the land of miracles; things happen despite the government and its colourful new minister of sports et al. We qualified for a final because another team was disqualified — we ride our luck.

How do we correct this sad state of affairs? You begin in schools, of course. Building and maintain facilities for sports including athletics. Training and deploying coaches.

“Structure” is a word South Africans like to use from the heydays of our antiapartheid politics. It is nonetheless a useful term: you build structures from the ground up, from pre-school through university, in clubs and communities. You put money into athletics etc. It is not glamorous work, minister of sports and what else, but it is the only way to build a competitive group of athletes for future games.

Where is the Rassie for the steeplechase? Instead, we hide sports under the Life Orientation curriculum.

We get this right in rugby because of “structures” and the fact that you need only 15 blokes to play. That’s why we dominate in the sport — those “structures” come from a handful of schools who produce and reproduce these elite rugby players through competitions like Craven Week and the Varsity Cup.

Still, I ask you: where is the Loftus for athletics? Where is the Rassie for the steeplechase?

Instead we hide sports under the Life Orientation (LO) curriculum. Most schools simply ignore it. But you would not know that from this eloquent language in the high school LO curriculum: “A fixed period should be dedicated to Physical Education every week and this period should be labelled Physical Education in the school timetable. The Physical Education component in grade 11 comprises three different movement sections: Fitness, Games & Sport, and Recreation.”

As any township kid will tell you, LOL. None of this happens and so we do not have the foundations necessary for building a deep and wide cast of young athletes who can come through “structures” over the next decade and more.

“I hear you’re running cross-country,” I prodded my six-year-old granddaughter on a video call in another country.

“Yep,” she answers.

“Do you like cross-country?”

“Nope, Pappa.”

But she was required to run a tough course and finished in the top three and then went off to swimming. Her family is not wealthy, but her school requires participation in a wide range of sports and, who knows, a child might find that one interest that takes her to another level of competition.

If only we could build strong foundations — not only in science and maths but also in swimming and running — for all our children.