By: Ockert de Villiers
Johannesburg - They don’t care. They don’t care about possible medals at the world championships. They don’t care about Olympic medal prospects. And they don’t care they are robbing future and current athletes of golden opportunities.
That is the only logical explanation for Athletics South Africa’s (ASA) attitude and reason for not making more of an effort to qualify a sprint relay team for the Rio Olympics.
This, of course, is nothing new as ASA displayed the same insolence in the build-up to last year’s world championships in Beijing.
Relay teams need to be ranked among the top 16 in the world, which is determined by the aggregate of their two fastest times.
Based on the fastest performance by a South African men’s 4x100m relay team, they will have to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the African Championships in Durban next month.
The five-day event could be the last opportunity for a South African team to post a fast time and they will be hoping for heats, too. Should South Africa fail to qualify a men’s 4x100m relay team for Rio, it would be gross incompetence byon the part of the ASA administration.
Boasting three athletes who have dipped below 10 seconds in the 100m dash, it could be the country’s best chance of winning a relay medal at the Olympics.Spearheaded by national 100m record holder Akani Simbine, the team could also include world 400m champion Wayde van Niekerk and Henricho Bruintjies.
It could also include SA 200m record-holder Anaso Jobodwana, who has run a personal best 100m time of 10.10 seconds.South Africa has a proud relay track record which includes the 2001 World Championships gold medal the quartet of Morné Nagel, Corné du Plessis, Lee-Roy Newton and Matthew Quinn won in Edmonton.
A relay team qualified for last year’s world championships courtesy of Simon Magakwe, Simbine, Ncinci Titi and Bruintjies’ record-breaking effort of 38.35 seconds the year before.A bungle at the first baton exchange between Bruintjies and Jobodwana saw the team fail to advance past the heats.
This hardly came as a surprise as the athletes were given no real opportunity to practise change-overs.Given the immense sprinting talent at their disposal, one would have thought ASA would have made plans, first of all, to create opportunities for a relay team to qualify and, secondly, to ensure they trained together.
While ASA have been hounded by the media to supply details of their plans to qualify a team, they have only paid lip service.Instead, the federation has made a concerted effort to qualify a 4x400m relay team by sending a squad to the World Indoor Championships, which would not have counted even if they had posted a fast time.
ASA entered a 4x400 team for the Diamond League meeting in Doha, where the quartet could not finish when Thapelo Phora pulled up during the race due to a hamstring injury.
Perhaps they believe Van Niekerk – with the sixth fastest time of all time of 43.48sec – would be able to carry the 4x400m relay team, but he has made it clear he will not be open to race in a below-par team and would instead throw his weight behind a 4x100m team should his services be needed.
In a half-hearted attempt, ASA hosted a relay competition this week at a time when most of the country’s top athletes were competing abroad.
Not even South Africa’s top juniors were available for the meet in Polokwane, where the burden of posting fast times was placed on fringe athletes.
While ASA are expending a lot of time and effort on qualifying a 4x400 team, the insane potential of a 4x100 team is being overlooked.
The Star