DAVID ISAACSON | The point is to make waves, Sascoc, not hinder them

Think about this. If the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) and sport minister Nathi Mthethwa had got their way, Bianca Buitendag would not have been at the Tokyo games.

The unassuming 27-year-old surfer from George would never have stood on the Tokyo Olympic podium to receive the valuable silver medal she won on Tuesday.

Sascoc suffered a severe case of pomposity before the Rio 2016 Olympics and decided to cut African qualification pathways for almost all codes.

Many sports offer qualification through continental competitions or to competitors who are the highest-ranked representatives from their continent.

I cannot think of another SA medallist since readmission in 1992 who has been such a dark horse.

Sascoc’s policy proved impossible for football, which had only a single qualifying competition open to them — an African men’s under-23 tournament. Sascoc had to make an exception for them to go to Rio. They also took along the women’s side, which had the 2015 World Cup as a qualification tournament, although only two spots were reserved for the top outfits there.

The policy was also nonsensical for several other codes. Cycling, for example, can get one or two extra riders into the road races through the continent, and teamwork is all important there. The bigger the team, the better the chances.

Sascoc also made an exception for them, but that’s pretty much where its charity ended and most of the other weaker codes sat out for the games, notably boxing, hockey, fencing and the women’s rugby sevens side.

Sascoc would have felt justified by its decision, given that the team equalled the country’s best haul at the Rio games with 10 medals. The tally could have been even higher, considering there were four fourth places.

Sascoc, struggling with funding after Lotto slashed its allocations from 2017, couldn’t afford to send a full team to the 2019 African Games, and they cut the team as they saw fit.

That irked the sports bodies because athletes they’d invested in to get to Morocco were suddenly discarded. The federations felt they hadn’t been properly consulted, and when they offered to pay their own way, Sascoc told them that wasn’t possible because it wasn’t policy.

That sparked the federations into action. They convened a special general meeting and changed the selection policy, also allowing individual bodies to contribute to trips if Sascoc couldn’t afford it.

That uprising is how Buitendag got to the games, where she was seeded 17th in a field of 20. She, of course, had to do all the hard work to reach the podium.

I cannot think of another SA medallist since readmission in 1992 who has been such a dark horse. The closest would be Henri Schoeman, who took bronze in the triathlon in Rio, but he had obviously qualified on the tougher international pathway. He wasn’t as far off the radar as Buitendag.

The decision suddenly meant Team SA would be much larger than expected. The Rio contingent comprised 138, and for Tokyo it was a little more than 170.

It turned out it wasn’t that much bigger, but even after the sports bodies took that decision in 2019, there were attempts to cut the team.

Mthethwa last year asked the Sascoc council to send a small team to Tokyo, saying it would otherwise be unaffordable. If the sports bodies that make up Sascoc had acceded Buitendag would almost certainly have been omitted.

There was further pressure from Lotto and government, by giving pitiful amounts to Sascoc for team delivery to the games. They added up to about R14m, way short of the more than R40m Sascoc had requested just to get the team to the Olympics (the Paralympics was more).

But Sascoc took the full team, somehow finding the cash.

The whole debate on selection criteria has misdirected SA sport from the issue it should be scrutinising — funding and supporting elite athletes as well as those trying to reach the top.

Until serious cash is thrown at sports it would be unfair to expect them to punch above their weight.

Sport costs money, and to qualify at the highest levels that Sascoc once demanded is far more expensive than the African pathways.

As it is, the majority of SA’s Olympic hopefuls have to contribute out of their own pockets. They have all made sacrifices to get to Tokyo, whether they are the water polo players getting thumped or Tatjana Schoenmaker standing on the podium.

Buitendag has vindicated the relaxed selection policy, and hopefully that gets the right people thinking about the right issues. Support, don’t slash.