Michael Finch Athletics
South Africa’s top athletes and their agents have turned down Athletics South Africa’s (ASA) latest contract offer, saying that athletes will have too many obligations, but agree that a settlement is imminent.
The initial deadline to sign the contracts was April 1, but due to disagreements over the amount of money being offered and the number of public appearances athletes would need to make on behalf of ASA’s sponsors, the deadline for contracts to be signed and sealed is now May 1.
“The meetings have been conducted in a good spirit and I’m confident we’ll be able to reach agreement,” one athlete said. “We just need to talk some more and reach a compromise.”
ASA secretary general, Banele Sindani, said however that revelations by the agents and athletes of the negotiations had been made in “bad faith”.
“We are negotiating with athletes and those represented by their agents and we would expect them not to divulge the results of those meetings with the media,” Sindani fumed.
Sindani nevertheless insisted that all the contracts had been draft contracts open for negotiation and that nothing had been set in stone.
The ASA representative said he would not comment on whether or not the deadline had been April 1, and would not discuss any details of the discussions.
But agents and athletes agreed that negotiations had come a long way from ASA’s opening draft document which, among other obligations, “contained a ludicrous amount of public appearances”.
“What the athletes had to do and what ASA had to give in return was disproportionate,” one agent said.
Initially, athletes would have been forced to make 32 public appearances a year. That figure has now dropped to just 10, an average of three appearances per ASA sponsor.
“ASA has compromised quite a bit,” one agent admitted. “But we’re not 100% happy.”
Sindani says a possible conflict of interest between ASA sponsors and the sponsors of individual athletes had also been a point of concern. One of those clubs is believed to the Rentmeester club in Pretoria which, with a financial institution as its main backer, is in conflict with Old Mutual, one of ASA’s sponsors. It is understood that because of these conflicts, even when final settlements are reached, some of the biggest names in South African track and field will still not sign the contracts.
The draft contract divides top athletes into A, B, C or D categories. A is for athletes with a world ranking between first and fifth or a gold medal at either an Olympics or World Championships. B category includes athletes ranked six to 10 or with a silver Olympic or World Championships medal, or a Commonwealth Games gold medal. The C category athletes includes those with Olympic or World Championship bronze medals, or ranked 10th to 20th in the world, or a Commonwealth Games silver medal. The project was announced late in March after cellphone service provider, Vodacom, came in as chief sponsor.
Most of the money being provided by Vodacom was redirected after the troubled All- African Invitational meeting was cancelled. The money set aside for the meeting will now be put into the contract programme.
If ASA and the athletes are able to come to an agreement, then South Africa will have the first national athletics federation in the world to offer contracts similar to those being paid to rugby, cricket and soccer players. The aim is to ensure that athletes are able to train full-time unhindered by financial stress. In return, they will form part of ASA’s plan to take athletics into the rural areas.