Hestrie Cloete and the men’s 4x100m relay team brought joy but there are still many problems in South African athletics
Martin Gillingham
Even if you’re one of the sports lovers who thought South Africa’s athletes did well at the world championships in Edmonton, there’s no disputing one fact: they did it in spite, rather than because, of the administration that sent them there.
Take it from me, the medal count of one gold and a silver, matching the tally in Athens four years ago, is an accurate reflection of where South Africa is at in world athletics. It was a pretty good showing. What’s more, that four South Africans, other than Hestrie Cloete and the men’s sprint relay quartet, made it into finals suggests there is other talent bubbling just under the surface.
Of course, had it not been for that remarkable final hour in Edmonton then this appraisal might have been a good deal more critical of the athletes and, to an extent, more damning of the sport’s administration. Even so, it doesn’t mean all in the garden is rosy.
Ask yourself what sort of chance the Springboks would have of beating the Wallabies on Saturday if they’d flown to Perth without a fulltime coach and against a background in the domestic game of the Golden Lions having been kicked out of the Currie Cup. Throw in allegations of widespread theft and mismanagement of funds at administrative level and a rotten relationship. With all this going on around them, it would be a wonder if the Springboks took to the field with their boots on the right feet.
It’s not a perfect parallel but that’s an illustration of the mess in South African athletics. The trust between the athletes and Banele Sindani and Leonard Chuene, the chief executive and president of Athletics South Africa (ASA) respectively, broke down a long time ago and, prompted by corruption allegations, led to the suspension of the Gauteng provincial administration.
Then there’s the absence of a Harry Viljoen figure. Despite the demands of a major championship every year, whether it be the world championships, Olympic or Commonwealth Games, ASA continues to plod on without a professional national coach. Sindani says there isn’t the money to pay one. If that’s so, then surely there’s all the more reason to find out what happened to the missing millions. Find those and ASA might be able to afford the athletics equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson.
The mess in the sport has not escaped the attention of the Minister of Sport and Recreation. Ngconde Balfour has been making himself busy around events in Edmonton. By the middle of the week he’d got all caught up in the hysteria and hyperbole of South African failure and launched his own inquiry into the poor performances.
Then there was the Llewellyn Herbert episode. The 400m hurdler’s disappointment at a first round exit got caught in the lens and microphone of a TV news reporter. Herbert is a volatile character with a limited vocabulary. Just how limited it is was heard by millions on SABC television news and the follow-up was an “apology to the nation” and possible appearance in front of the minister on his return.
But I have sympathy for Herbert, who was running his first race in more than four months. His over- reaction has been matched only by that of officials, who presumably put him up to this laughable “apology to the nation”.
Herbert wasn’t fit and, in retrospect, will conclude he shouldn’t have even gone to Edmonton. But the athletics world is full of whingers and whiners who cry off at the merest muscle twinge. Herbert went there, gave it a go, but failed. The sad thing is that the personal enmities of certain observers, who’d tired of Herbert’s pugilistic talk on the run-up to Sydney, were not going to miss their chance. And the firebrand duly delivered in a flurry of “effs and dubyas”.
That this minor spat wasn’t allowed to lie there or be defused in a frank one-on-one behind closed doors back at the village is a testimony to the lack of management skills within the team’s administration. Linford Christie used to behave like that, and worse, on a weekly basis in his heyday. To imagine him delivering a humble apology to the British nation is as hard as visualising Balfour running 100m.
If there is a lesson to be learnt from the past fortnight it is that something needs to be done about the way teams are selected. Apparently, ASA is guided from within by Richard Stander, who is credited as the architect of the selection policy that sent the team to Edmonton. In this writer’s experience, Stander is neither a man with an empathy for the demands of international competition nor someone who’s prepared to listen to those who have.
The result of Stander’s work this year was a thorough document that, with the odd exception, got all the athletes to Edmonton that should have gone. The policy’s failing was that it asked the athletes to jump through too many hoops for too long before, virtually on the eve of the team’s departure, telling them whether or not they were going.
It meant a number of athletes arrived in Edmonton over-raced and pyschologically exhausted by the process of selection. The aim of any selection policy should be to get the best possible team in the best possible physical and mental well-being to the championships. And the best way to do that is to scrap the ludicrous ASA standards in favour of the more lenient and realistic qualifying marks established by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
There is also no reason why 80% to 90% of the team should not be selected at the end of March. Just a handful of places should then be left for athletes who may not yet have not satisfied the selectors.
Incentives should be introduced to protect and enhance the credibility of the domestic calendar. The national championships this year were not worthy of the title. So in 2002, ASA should offer the incentive of a place at the Commonwealth Games to anyone who wins a national title and who, at the same time, achieves the IAAF A standard at any meeting during the domestic season.
If this all seems staggeringly simple it’s because it is. All ASA officials have to do is cast aside their personal egos, abandon their political posturing, ask for help when they need it and, as for footing the bill for a national coach, recover at least some of the missing millions. Surely it’s not too much to ask.