South Africa will be competing in the Rio Olympic Games next month with possibly its strongest team since readmission, and is bound to return with a healthy medals haul.
Enter the glory boys that lurk in the shadows waiting to welcome the medallists back home, and declare significance of their influence in their success.
This kind of pathetic behaviour was on display at last week’s African Athletics Championships in Durban when the women’s 4x400m relay team raced to a new South African record.
Athletics South Africa (ASA) had been notoriously unfazed about qualifying relay teams for the Olympics, making very little or no effort to create opportunities for the country’s best sprinters.
While the ASA administration had been slow to respond to calls to aid the athletes in this regard, certain administrators were quick to run onto the track to pose with the victorious quartet of Caster Semenya, Wenda Nel, Justine Palframan and Jeanelle Griesel.
The braggarts unashamedly boasted how this was all part of their grand plan without realising that posting one fast time was not good enough ahead of the fast-approaching July 11 deadline with desperately few opportunities remaining.
South Africas recent athletics revival has been in spite of the administrators’ efforts, whether intentional or not, to derail the sport.
The athletes’ success has nothing to do with dedicated development programmes or support from the federation but rather thanks to devoted parents, coaches and private institutions that carry them.
This week, the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) announced it would release R70 million to the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) towards the South African team for the Rio Games with just over a month to go before the start of the Summer Olympiad.
These funds are unlikely to truly aid athletes in their preparations just over a month away from the global showpiece.
It is as if the NLC only woke up now to the fact that it's an Olympic year in which the athletes have already had to make do with what little funds they already had.
Athletes and their representatives questioned what the money would be used for, and whether they would see even a cent of it.
“We were beginning to panic, and I was just about to fire the CEO and the CFO - and I'm happy now we can go to Rio, and there was doubt as to whether any of these board members would go to Rio,” Sascoc president Gideon Sam said.
“I said if there is no money, there is no trip, but we have to acknowledge that with what we’ve got we can assist our athletes.”
Perhaps it was said in jest but Sam’s remarks send out the wrong message that the concern was almost more for the board members missing out on a free trip instead of the athletes who have had to use private funds over the last Olympic cycle.
While Sascoc has been supporting certain athletes through its Operation Excellence programme, others have had to find private funding not only to realise their own dreams but also to represent the country.
Whereas some athletes are in desperate need of funding whether from their respective federations, others have opted not to be tied down by either.
By opting out, they do not allow Sascoc or the national federations to gloat about the athletes’ successes when their contribution has been minimal.
In the end, the athletes will receive a hero’s welcome with a fair amount of back-slapping by the administrators for medals for which they deserve no credit.
Saturday Star