DAVID ISAACSON | Zizi wants only the top Olympic athletes in Paris, but his request is late

Sports minister Zizi Kodwa reawakened a controversial relic at the weekend when he asked sports bodies to reconsider the size of the team to compete at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Basically he’s in favour of a squad heavy on medal hopes, but lean on so-called hangers-on.

This is an issue that has haunted South African sport for the better part of the last decade or so, ever since the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) decided to impose stringent selection criteria ahead of the London 2012 Games.

The policy was made even tougher for Rio 2016 and was applied mercilessly.

Qualifying standards for each Games are decided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international federations, and these can differ vastly.

In rugby sevens, for example, the top four teams at the end of the 2022/23 world series automatically won spots for Paris, with other spots being decided in regional playoffs.

Football, however, offers only continental qualification.

And then you get field hockey where five sides will be decided at continental competitions and six at international qualification tournaments.

What Sascoc did in 2016 was to decide that nobody could qualify through continental competitions because they deemed African pathways too weak. The only exceptions were football and the men’s road cycling team.

Sascoc told everyone that its selection policy had been endorsed by council, the organisation’s highest decision-making body, but it turned out they were lying. 

Anyway, in 2019 the sports bodies got gatvol after Sascoc, struggling with cash, left a whole bunch of their athletes out of the African Games without consultation. 

The federations that make up Sascoc called a special general meeting and reversed the Olympic selection policy, opting simply to accept the agreements between the IOC and the international bodies.

They even added a clause stating that if Sascoc couldn’t afford to send athletes or a team, then individual codes would be given the chance to raise the necessary funding.

The South African team to Tokyo 2020 numbered nearly 180 competitors, the biggest squad in history by far.

They returned with three medals, two from swimmer Tatjana Schoenmaker and one from surfer Bianca Buitendag.

Had the old Sascoc policy been in place, it might have been just two medals because Buitendag qualified at a second-tier competition that might not have been deemed acceptable. 

That’s pretty much the only time a lower-tier qualifier has made an Olympic podium for SA, but it illustrates the danger of not thinking such exclusionary policies through. 

I would think that cash is behind Kodwa’s request, especially because his own department is facing budget cuts and there are going to be knock-on effects.

But what is the cost of sending a team to the Olympics?

Accommodation and meals are free for all visiting teams, and the IOC reimburses the cost of air tickets up to a level. As I understand it, they roughly cover the cost of the cheapest tickets.

Obviously kit costs go up the bigger the team, and more athletes means more coaches, managers, physiotherapists and doctors who are a direct cost to Sascoc, which must also pay per diem allowances to athletes and support personnel.

So there are extra costs.

I’ve heard arguments that tough qualifying criteria are the best way to ensure quality and will result in weaker codes lifting themselves up to the required standard.

But I don’t know if that’s true. How else are weaker codes supposed to discover what world class really is?

I also believe that exclusionary policies pose a risk to the weaker codes, which in this country need every bit of assistance possible. What would summarily killing Olympic ambition do to the minnow sports?

And then one has to consider the money and sacrifices made by sports people in the weaker codes trying to achieve their dreams of getting to the Olympics.

Archer Carien Whitehead relocated to Spain to try improve enough to make the team for Tokyo. She didn’t succeed, but her venture cost her serious cash.

Artistic swimmers Laura Strugnell and Clarissa Johnston spent about R10,000 a week to train as best they could, crowdfunding to raise some of that cash.

Do these people sound like hangers-on looking to have a party at the expense of the IOC and Sascoc? I think not. These are athletes trying to improve their standards. 

It costs a huge amount of money to win an Olympic medal, probably at least R1m in a four-year cycle. Small codes simply don’t get that type of money.

It follows that it also costs a fortune to get an athlete or team to the level where they can qualify on the top tiers. African qualification options are simply much more affordable.

Would it be fair to deny Olympic entry to the smaller codes when there’s no investment to get their athletes to top levels?

Athletes have been preparing for Paris since the end of Tokyo. How fair would it be on them to tell them now they might not be going after all, even if they do qualify?

Kodwa made the point that countries like New Zealand don’t take everyone to the Olympics, and that is true. 

At the moment there is no policy, and there probably should be one to settle this once and for all. But it needs to be put in place at the start of an Olympic cycle, not imposed within the final 12 months.

The conversation for Los Angeles 2028 needs to start now, not in 2027. 

Less than a year before the Tokyo Games Kodwa’s predecessor, Nathi Mthethwa, made the same request, and he was rejected out of hand.

I can’t see federations agreeing to give up Paris at this point in the game.