Johannesburg – Thomson Wilks Inc has served the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) with a summons for culpable and wrongful failure to enter their client, Olympic qualifying women’s epée fencer Juliana Barrett, into the 2016 Olympic Games held in Brazil last year to represent South Africa.
Barrett is also suing the Fencing Federation of South Africa for their complicit involvement in the failure. Epée fencing is a type of sports fencing that utilises the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in the sport. Barrett is currently the top women’s epée fencer in South Africa and is a multiple medal winner at the African Games and the Commonwealth Games.
According to court documents, Barrett qualified to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games when she competed in and won the official International Fencing Federation (FIE) qualifying tournament for Africa held in Algeria in April 2016.
The FIE is the International Sports Federation recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the world governing body of fencing. Following her qualification for the Olympics, the Fencing Federation of SA recommended to Sascoc that Barrett be entered to represent SA at the 2016 Olympics.
The FIE also notified Sascoc of Barrett’s qualification for the 2016 Olympics and advised it of the deadline – 6 June 2016 – to confirm her participation in the event.
Despite this, Barrett alleges that Sascoc intentionally or negligently failed to meet the deadline to confirm her participation in the 2016 Olympic Games; failed to meet even its own Olympic Games deadlines; and acted in an unfair, arbitrary, capricious and irrational manner.
Barrett’s inability to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games will cost her sponsorship to train and study in the USA, which would also have covered the costs of her competing in qualifying tournaments in the lead up to the 2020 Olympic Games to be held in Tokyo. As such, Barrett is suing Sascoc and the Fencing Federation of SA for R5 673 600 plus interest, the cost of the lawsuit, and possible future relief.
Thomson Wilks managing partner, Stephen Thomson says that Barrett’s exclusion from the 2016 Olympic Games is a tragedy.
“Juliana missed the opportunity to participate at the Rio Olympics solely due to the bureaucratic incompetence of Sascoc, who negligently failed to timeously register her as a participant with the IOC. She is a young, energetic South African athlete in the prime of her career and the only Olympic qualifying fencer in the world who did not participate.
"We intend to make full use of Juliana’s legal remedies to ensure that Juliana is compensated for the financial losses she now faces as a result of SASCOC’s negligence.
"Unfortunately, this compensation cannot make up for the emotional trauma that Juliana had to endure during the 2016 Olympics when she was forced to watch her peers competing in a competition that she’d always dreamed of competing in and representing South Africa, and should rightfully have been competing in at the time.”
The matter will go to trial in the High Court, Johannesburg on a date to be determined.