Selecting which teams and individuals will represent South Africa at the Olympics is a controversial task, and the decision on the hockey team is a particularly hard one, writes Julian Drew
ON Saturday morning in Durban Sam Ramsamy, president of the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa), will announce the first contingent of competitors for the team to the centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta in July. There will be additions to the team in sports like athletics and swimming after the various national championships have been staged in March and April, but for many sports the decision on whether they will compete in Atlanta will be made on Saturday.
Ramsamys task will not be an easy one as there has already been opprobrium from the media over Nocsas selection policy.
At the last Olympics in Barcelona South Africa sent 94 athletes in 17 individual sports and returned with just two silver medals. The euphoria of competing again after an absence of 32 years was perhaps justification enough for sending such a large team, but the experiences in Barcelona quickly brought home the message that this country had fallen far behind the rest of the world during isolation.
Nocsa reassessed its strategy of selection and adopted the more sensible two-tier approach utilised by the worlds top Olympic nations for its policy for Atlanta and beyond. This policy allows for the inclusion of potential medal winners and athletes who can be expected to reach at least the semi-finals, as well as those young, up-and-coming athletes who could win medals at the next Olympics and would benefit from the experience.
It is with these less experienced athletes that Nocsa is looking to redress some of the imbalances resulting from the inequalities inherited from apartheid sport. This policy fulfils the requirements of the Ministry of Sport and Recreations Draft White Paper which calls for greater efforts to achieve more representative teams at international level.
However, this policy has met with sharp criticism in many former establishment circles. Many sports which are able to qualify via the African qualification system rather than the far more stringent international route are trying to ensure their selection for Atlanta. With the exception of football, boxing and athletics, African sport is far behind world standards and Nocsa believes that a team or athletes from this country in other Olympic sports should qualify through the designated international tournaments or achieve the required qualifying times or marks.
Nocsa is looking to send a more compact team to Atlanta that will meet its two-tier criteria, but exclude the type of holiday-makers that formed a large part of the Barcelona team.
It is against this background that the mens hockey team became the centre of controversy after winning the gold medal at the All Africa Games to earn automatic qualification to Atlanta. The dilemma for us is to decide whether we are part of the developing world or whether we should qualify via the normal international routes. However, the Nocsa executive will not make any selection decisions without exhaustive consultation with the sports concerned, said Ramsamy at the time, after he had stated that not all those sports which had qualified through Africa were assured of going to Atlanta.
So what are the merits of hockeys case? Both the mens and womens team missed the qualifying tournaments for Barcelona and the mens first real taste of international competition was at the World Cup in Australia at the end of 1994. South Africa finished 10th overall after missing out on the opportunity to contest the fifth to eighth place play-off games when Germany and Korea drew their last game and both qualified at the expense of South Africa.
Last year they won the All Africa Games which gave them an automatic berth at the Olympics where 12 teams will contest the tournament. The side also played in a number of international matches against some of the worlds top nations and held their own without being disgraced. They lost by more than one goal only twice, against two of the worlds top sides, Australia and Germany.
Although the side presently has only one player of colour among the squad of 16 that would go to Atlanta, the South African Hockey Association (Saha) has a well run and very cost-effective development programme that is beginning to show results. Five of the side which finished sixth in the under-18 World Cup in Pakistan in December and six of the under-16 side come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Steve Jaspan, president of Saha, is quite upbeat about the chances of the team being selected. Im very positive about it and I remain utterly convinced that they deserve to go to the Olympics. Their world ranking and standard of play confirms that.
The first time they were in the international arena at the World Cup they finished 10th which isnt bad out of 120 hockey-playing nations. The average age of our team is under 23 and by the time of the Sydney Olympics that age will still be only 27, plus we will have younger players coming in.
In terms of development we have legitimate and transparent programmes in place which are working. Theres no window dressing. The players are coming through but you cant have a quick fix in terms of merit and suddenly there are seven black guys in the team. I believe that in terms of the standard of the current team and its potential for the next Olympics we meet Nocsas selection criteria, says Jaspan.
South Africa have already been drawn in Group B of the Olympic hockey tournament along with Australia, Holland, Britain, South Korea and Malaysia and judging by Nocsas stated intent with regard to selection and its commitment to consultation, it is unlikely to leave the team behind.
In most sports universality in the make-up of national teams is going to take time, and merit selection is going to favour those who benefited from apartheid for some time yet. As such the tasks of those like Ramsamy, who have to answer to a broader constituency, will still be difficult in the short term.