All 150kg of shot-put star Kyle Blignaut rocked up to the athletes’ indaba organised by the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) recently wearing shorts, slops and a large smile.
There was nothing unusual about it, except that it was pretty darn cold.
Lwandile Simelane, the Sascoc board member who had been the chef de mission at the Commonwealth Games earlier this year, chuckled as she recounted that even on the chilliest days in Birmingham Blignaut wore his shorts.
“It’s good to see you’re still wearing short pants,” she quipped, recounting another interesting behind-the-scenes moment during the showpiece.
Swimmer Pieter Coetzé, on the day of his 100m backstroke final, got stuck in a lift at the village. Games staff had him out within five minutes or so, and his high spirits had not been dampened, apparently laughing off the incident.
That night he went out and won gold, Team SA’s second of the Games, coming soon after Lara van Niekerk’s victory in the women’s 50m breaststroke earlier in the evening.
Simelane said his triumph sparked a joke that the lift had a magic-like quality and that anyone wanting a gold medal should take a ride in it.
Shortly before the indaba started Sascoc issued a statement saying that all SA’s Commonwealth Games medallists had been paid the incentives promised to them by deputy sports minister.
Then during the event CEO Nozipho Jafta announced that they were on the verge of relaunching their Operation Excellence (OpEx) funding programme for athlete development.
Preparing athletes and rewarding them for good performances are two very different concepts.
OpEx has historically been aimed at helping medal contenders convert their potential into podium finishes, while rewards have been offered haphazardly over the decades.
If I remember correctly a cellphone sponsor offered R1m prize for each gold at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, with R500,000 for silver and R250,000 for bronze, but that was a one-off.
No such incentives were on offer for the next event, Athens 2004.
Offering rewards a couple of months out from an event and calling them incentives is a misnomer.
OpEx, which started under Sascoc’s predecessor, the National Olympic Committee of SA (Nocsa), has also had a randomness about it, with pretty much nothing on the table for Beijing 2008. It ran at its zenith for London 2012 and Rio 2016, but dried up in early 2020.
There has been a correlation between funding and medals (Beijing harvested one medal and Tokyo three, while London delivered six and Rio 10). Consistently funding athletes to prepare is what is required to improve performances, bearing in mind that they effectively train in four-year blocks. The work to win an Olympic medal in 2024 probably started in 2016, if not earlier.
Offering rewards a couple of months out from an event and calling them incentives is a misnomer.
There was a huge outcry during the Tokyo Olympics when it emerged that there was no money for incentives for SA’s medallists Tatjana Schoenmaker and Bianca Buitendag.
That outrage was totally misplaced — it should have been directed at Sascoc for the lack of OpEx funding, and probably also at the National Lotteries Commission for not making enough cash available for athlete preparation on a sustainable basis.
If OpEx were to be reintroduced today, it’ll be too late for many young athletes, except for those already on the fringes of podium potential. In terms of developing raw talent it would be more useful for Los Angeles 2028. Don’t get me wrong, that’s still great news.
The other remark mentioned at the indaba, by Simelane, was that women had won more medals than men in Birmingham for the first time.
This was not correct. Simelane has proven herself as a capable and ethical administrator, so the problem here is probably a lack of institutional knowledge at Sascoc.
First, women outshone men at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada (they also outdid the men at the 1996 Olympic Games, but let’s compare apples with apples).
Second, the comment may allow some people to think that women’s sport is on the up in South Africa.
Yes, they won 14 medals in Birmingham to the men’s 13. But SA women won 14 medals at Melbourne 2006 and Manchester 2002, which means that women have only caught up to where they were 16 years ago, 20 years ago.
The men have gone backwards.
A sports plan and funding to make that plan work is urgently needed in this country. OpEx funding is only one part of it, because it goes to the athletes already near the top, not the ones still trying to get there.
Fortunately there are competitors like Coetzé, who also won a 50m backstroke silver and 200m bronze in Birmingham.
Coetzé stated that he wanted to aim for two Olympic gold medals in Paris 2024, and he still has some way to get there — he is more than a second off the pace in both the 100m and 200m (the 50m is not an Olympic event).
It’s going to take a lot of effort, time and money so he can get into the best possible shape in 2024, and even then there is no guarantee.
If only it was as easy as walking into a lift.
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