South African athletes know exactly what they must do to get to Edmonton, Canada, and the world championships later this year
Martin Gillingham
The message from Athletics South Africa’s (ASA) top official to athletes hoping to make the team for the world championships is refreshingly unambiguous: “All athletes who meet our criteria will go to Canada.”
Those are the words of ASA’s CE Banele Sindani who, it would be fair to say, has not always inspired unflinching trust among athletes. This time around, comforted by Sindani’s statement, athletes have few grounds for suspicion.
Sindani says he expects a team of between 25 and 35 to go to Edmonton, Canada, where the championships start on August 3. It’s set to be the biggest team South Africa has sent to a global championship.
In simple terms, there are three ways in which athletes can make the team. Category A, as it is known, caters for the elite who either made Olympic finals in Sydney or have achieved ASA’s own qualifying standards. Hestrie Cloete, Frantz Kruger, Llewellyn Herbert and a handful more fall within this category. Categories B and C focus on the sport’s development drive. Summed up in vulgar terms, if you’re not black, female or under 25, then you needn’t apply.
In truth, though, it’s a policy that balances the need for excellence now and investment for the future. Just the odd one or two of those who are theoretically at, or beyond, their peak but still perhaps capable of reaching a semifinal or final could argue the policy discriminates against them.
Sadly, one of those is the 400m hurdler Surita Febbraio whose omission from the Olympic team last year raised eyebrows. “All athletes who go have their own individual objectives,” Sindani says. “Not everyone is going with the expectation of bringing back a medal.”
But despite the fact the policy is the most mature selection document yet produced by ASA, it isn’t without its deficiencies. For starters, it’s a document equal to the length of a Jeffrey Archer short story and, like one of those tales, stands to be accused of being not entirely the author’s own work.
That is not necessarily a weakness. ASA’s document is a hybrid of policies adopted by countries such as Britain and Australia and built up over the course of almost a decade since the lifting of the international moratorium.
Where ASA has let itself down, however, is in the severity of its own qualifying standards which are the most stringent yet set by a national federation. They’re more demanding even than those set two decades ago by the East Germans when their athletes, blown out of their brains on Turinabol, were allowed on the plane only if they were odds-on for a medal.
Of the handful who actually achieved ASA qualifying standards during the domestic season, at least one did so only by following the East German edict.
Burger Lambrechts, a world championships finalist the last time they were held in Seville two years ago, broke the South African shot put record in Port Elizabeth on February 23 with a throw of 20,90m but ended the night having his collar felt by the drugs police.
Lambrechts tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanazolol. It’s the same elixir Ben Johnson turned to in 1988 when he scorched up the Seoul track to win Olympic gold and smash the world 100m record. Earlier this week, ASA reported that Lambrechts had asked to have the B sample tested to confirm the original reading. “I’m just pursuing this thing as far as I can,” Lambrechts says. “It’s one of my rights.”
That test will be carried out in Bloemfontein in the next 10 days and is expected to be a formality. Even if it isn’t it’s almost unprecedented for analysis of a B sample to contradict tests on the A then ASA still have a card wedged up its sleeve.
Until now, just Lambrechts, and a handful of ASA officials, were aware that the 28-year-old from Pretoria has another positive test to answer for. Seven days after Port Elizabeth, and apparently in a state no less toxic, Lambrechts competed at the final Absa meeting in Stellenbosch where he heaved the shot to within a centimetre of his new national record. Again he was tested and again analysis of his sample sent the Bloemfontein laboratory staff into a state of delirium.
Lambrechts is now resigned to his fate and, though anyone should be reluctant to demonstrate too much sympathy for a man who has cheated, it’s easy to understand why an athlete in his position chose a lifestyle that left him monitoring his testosterone levels every bit as much as the vertical alignment of his chin, knee and toe at the back of the shot circle.
The shot is the most explosive of all athletics events and dominated by the biggest men. Lambrechts was a world top-10 putter but such is the standard demanded by ASA that he had to throw a national record to guarantee his place in the team. The South African record the same as the ASA standard is 20,60m and a distance that placed Yuriy Belonog of Ukraine fifth at the last world championships.
The principle beneficiary of Lambrechts’ doping failure is Jan Pienaar, whose 10-year-old mark will soon be reinstated in the South African record books. He, too, had his career terminated prematurely when, in May 1992, he was suspended following a drugs test.