Mike Finch Commonwealth Games
South Africa’s track and field athletes returned home from the Commonwealth Games on Tuesday clutching 11 medals – their biggest haul at a major event since returning to the international scene in 1993. Unfortunately, only one of the medallists was black.
Olympic 800m runner Hezekiel Sepeng, almost a veteran member of every South African athletics team since the Stuttgart World championships, grabbed his second Commonwealth Games silver ahead of compatriot Johan Botha.
The statistic begs the question: where are all our black athletes?
A team of 31 track and field athletes attended the Games, of which 12 were black.
Most of the medals came from the field events, where the likes of world javelin champion Marius Corbett and pole-vaulter Riaan Botha were firm favourites for medals even before they stepped on to the track.
The same went for high-jumper Hestrie Storbeck and shot-putter Burger Lambrechts who were both ranked in the top three of the Commonwealth in 1998.
Sepeng was one of four silver medallists with pole-vaulter Elmarie Gerryts, shot- putter Veronica Abrahamse and discus-hurler Frantz Kruger, all of whom were ranked among the top five in the Commonwealth. Of the four Sepeng was ranked fourth in 1998 and Abrahamse fifth, which meant that, on paper anyway, they were outside medal chances.
Of the remaining 11 black athletes, Makhosonke Fika was the highest ranked in the 10E000m at seventh.
Does it mean then that Athletics South Africa’s (Asa) development plans are not working?
Not so, says Asa secretary general Banele Sindani. “We get asked this every day,” Sindani says, “and people must realise that Asa has only been existence for six years and we all know how long blacks were unable to compete in athletics. We can’t solve this problem overnight.”
Asa is already in the process of spending some R15-million on development over the next three years – a programme rated by the International Amateur Athletics Federation as one of the most extensive in world athletics.
“We need more resources to undo the damage of the past and when you compare the sort of money that the Australians had at their disposal then it’s hard to compete,” Sindani says. “People sometimes have unrealistic expectations.”
But Sindani admits that it’s not just money that will solve the problem of unearthing the massive groundswell of talent. It is also about changing attitudes in society where soccer rules and where financial considerations, including the search for employment, take priority over a sport which has been traditionally white.
“You can’t just throw money at problems,” Sindani says. “People think that if you spend R1-million you get 100 medallists. It doesn’t just work like that. It’s a far more complicated process.”
The process, it seems, may be working. Last season, no fewer than 76 athletes from previously disadvantaged areas placed in the top 10 of the South African junior rankings.
At the senior national championships, 37 members of Asa’s development squad aged between 17 and 23, won a medal with half of those again coming from previously disadvantaged areas.
Asa has trained more than a 1E000 coaches since the start of the Talent Identification Programme of which 91% are from previously disadvantaged areas and 36% are women.
In Kuala Lumpur, South Africa black athletes also found themselves competing in the same event as the world leaders in the middle distances – Kenya – while the field event athletes had relatively easy competition.
The only non-field medals came from Sepeng, Johan Botha (800m bronze) and Shaun Bownes (110m hurdles).
While Corbett probably had it hardest in the javelin against the British pair of Steve Backley and Mick Hill, the same could not be said of pole- vaulter Riaan Botha, Storbeck or Lambrechts.
Botha even admitted as much. “It was an easy competition for me,” he says. “But it’s more than we got last time.” His winning jump of 5,60m was way off his personal best of 5,91 and was way short of a competitive height needed for a medal at a world championship or Olympics.
The problem of producing medal winning athletes is not just confined to athletics.
Of the 34 medals won by the entire South African team only Sepeng, boxer Phumzile Mathyila (bronze) and the gold medal cricketers Paul Adams, Herschelle Gibbs, Makhaya Ntini and Henry Williams can claim to be “not white”.
Kuala Lumpur chef de mission Gideon Sam conceded this week that all the federations had been asked to give athletes from previously disadvantaged communities as much opportunity as possible but with mixed results. “Some did really well but there are others who are having some problems,” Sam says.