Athletics SA (ASA) this week declared 2016 a “spectacular” season for the sport in the country, highlighting the four medals from the Rio Olympic Games.
It has indeed been an immense season for South African track and field with Caster Semenya and Wayde van Niekerk winning gold in Rio and Luvo Manyonga and Sunette Viljoen adding silver to the overall tally.
While the athletes continue to excel on the international stage, the federation seems to have found some sort of stability over the last year. However, as much as ASA would like to take credit for the athletics team’s superb performances at the Games, it would be disingenuous to do so.
Instead of supporting athletes in their Olympic pursuit, ASA seemed to sabotage their efforts around each corner.
The qualifying process for the Games was a colossal disaster as ASA made bizarre changes to the criteria without any good reason. This caused great angst and confusion among athletes as they battled to find a clear indication about what was needed to qualify for the Rio Olympics.
ASA initially wanted to introduce stricter qualifying standards at the beginning of the year but, fortunately, they came to their senses and dropped this all together.
The selection criteria for the Olympic marathon also changed as the year progressed with the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) and ASA retroactively requiring athletes to have participated at the national 42km championships in 2014, 2015 or 2016.
In the end, they didn't use this criteria during the final selection process. Common sense prevailed once again, with the three fastest male and female athletes earning their places based on their qualifying times.
ASA’s biggest and almost unforgivable blunder must be the two possible medals it cost the country at the Rio Olympic Games.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, ASA’s failure to qualify a single relay team for the Games is a disgrace and indicates pure incompetence.
ASA had been asked about its plan to assemble a men’s 4x100m relay team after the quartet of of Henricho Bruintjies, Simon Magakwe, Akani Simbine and Ncinci Titi set a national record of 38.35 seconds at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Questions about ASA's plan for a relay team were either ignored or answered by doublespeak to the detriment of the athletes and the sport.
ASA first failed to send teams to the World Relay Championships in 2015 before an ill-prepared relay team dropped the baton at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing in the same year.
The athletics body promised not only to put plans in place to qualify a team for the Rio Games but also prepare them for the global showpiece. These were not forthcoming.
ASA has an opportunity to redeem itself over the next year, and if it's unable to create opportunities for the insane talent it has at their disposal, it should do the honourable thing and leave the sport.
South Africa now boast three sprinters with the ability to run below 10 seconds over 100 metres and a few more waiting in the wings. World 400m record-holder Wayde van Niekerk’s name can now be added to the list as he turns his attention to the 100m and 200m in 2017.
National 100m record-holder Simbine now counts among the fastest men in the world, while Bruintjies is also due for another sub-10-second race. Add a fit and healthy South African 200m record-holder Anaso Jobodwana to the mix and you have a quartet that can give the rest of the world a run for their money.
There are 217 days to the World Relays. Let’s hope ASA has the sense to send a team.
@ockertde
Saturday Star