While all the focus has been on South Africa’s athletes, very little attention has been paid to coaches and structures to ensure that mentors have a pathway to help produce stars such as Wayde van Niekerk and Caster Semenya.
But that is set to change following last weekend’s national coaches symposium that was hosted by Athletics South Africa in Bloemfontein.
While one of the main resolutions to have come out of the symposium was a plan of action to ensure that South Africa field competitive relay teams at next year’s world championships in London, coaches have often had to trod a lonely path, despite being the men and women who help mould promising athletes into Olympic champions and medallists.
The Department of Sport and Recreation took the first step to giving greater recognition to coaches when they awarded bonuses to those who guided the athletes and teams who won medals at the Rio Olympics – R100 000 for gold (Van Niekerk and Semenya), R50 000 for silver (Chad le Clos, Cameron van der Burgh, Luvo Manyonga, Sunette Viljoen, and rowing pair Shaun Keeling and Lawrence Brittain) and R20 000 for bronze (triathlon’s Henri Schoeman and the Springbok Sevens rugby team).
Now Athletics South Africa wants to see coaches from across the country come through a “unified national approach”, and the first step will be to do a “needs analysis” after an interim report on the symposium was submitted to ASA.
Among the notable points from the report, according to a statement from ASA on Sunday, was that there is a need to speed up the development of coaches through courses, with special focus to increase rural-based and women mentors.
A thesis to deliver an “athlete of international standing” will be drawn up by ASA’s coaches committee in conjunction with submissions handed in at the symposium.
“We are happy about the progressive work put in by everyone in Bloemfontein,” said ASA president Aleck Skhosana. “There were areas of athletics that we wanted to cover, but not everyone who was expected could attend.
“But it was indeed a complete success. There was a lot to be discussed and a lot was accomplished because we were able to lay a way forward on the approach for the next four years up to the next Olympics Games in Japan in 2020.
“It was recommended that ASA, in conjunction with the coaches committee, must draw up a needs analysis for coaches and submit it to the provinces for completion so that a more comprehensive database can be constructed so that it captures details of all active coaches. Once completed by provinces, a plan of action will be mapped (out), led by the coaches committee.”
But one of the vital aspects of athletics which the symposium didn’t get an opportunity to address was the relationship between athletes and their agents or managers, and how coaches fit into the bigger scheme of things.
Skhosana told Independent Media that he feels coaches should get a better deal. “I said in my opening address that without coaches, we will never have athletes, and vice versa. And without coaches and athletes, there is no federation,” he said.
“All these achievements are not achieved by Skhosana as an administrator – they are achieved by the athletes and coaches, who spend so many hours as volunteers. I said that the time has come where we need to look at how do our coaches benefit out of it.
“Agents are getting money out of the athletes, but they are not training them. The coaches train them, but are getting nothing. They need to come up with recommendations to deal with this.”