ASA angry over Olympic funds ‘insult’

The gloves are finally off in the scrap between Athletics South Africa (ASA) and the National Olympic Committee (Nocsa) over athletics funding. ASA CEO Banele Sindani announced the governing bodies’ decision to suspend any future correspondence at executive level.

This decision involves the suspension of ASA’s participation in all Nocsa general meetings (AGMs and councils) and it will be binding, pending the final outcome of the initiative by Minister of Sport and Recreation Ngconde Balfour, who has been roped in to resolve the dispute.

The disagreement can be traced back to before the Sydney Olympics and reached boiling point when ASA president and African International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) representative Leonard Chuene was suspended by Nocsa, along with Dan Moyo, for bringing the sport into disrepute when he aired his misgivings about the Olympics council in the media.

Balfour was called in to mediate earlier this week, but it seems that even his wisdom wasn’t enough to keep the warring factions from each others’ throats.

‘The decision was taken against the background that Nocsa’s meetings have, at best, become meaningless to ASA and, at worst, sources of great agony and pain,” said Sindani.

‘ASA will continue to work with the office of Nocsa at an operational level to ensure the athletes aren’t disadvantaged in any way by this decision,” he said.

In the final analysis, the argument comes down to money.

‘We understand that Nocsa was a little peeved when we described the allowance we get for Operation Excellence [Opex] as ‘peanuts’. It is more than that, it is an insult,” said Sindani.  

‘We can’t understand how we can be paid an amount of R1,1-million when sports such as rowing get R900 000; badminton R800 000 (plus R180 000 from Olympic Solidarity); canoeing R517 000 and volleyball R500 000. When last I checked, badminton and volleyball have never made it to the Olympic Games.”

These magnanimous handouts are based on what Sindani calls ‘an uncle in the furniture business”. South African rowing union president Richard Wilkinson was described by Sindani as being one of head of Nocsa Sam Ramsamy’s ‘right-hand men”. He barely stopped short of calling him a henchman.

‘ASA has noted a number of press statements from Nocsa claiming full credit for the outstanding performances of our athletes in the European circuit, and we are terribly annoyed and irritated by this,” Sindani continued.

‘We appreciate the help Nocsa gives some of our athletes through Opex. Having said that, it should know better — that to produce an Olympic medallist takes much more than Opex, which does not even provide the minimum support athletes need.

‘ASA do not get the support they deserve from Nocsa, yet Nocsa want to claim more credit than they deserve.”

He went on to describe the so-called Operation Excellence as being ‘Operation Mediocrity”.

Chuene himself is on record as saying: ‘This is a fight about right and wrong. There are just too many things being done wrong. The gloves are off, Sam Ramsamy has got to be stopped.”