No fairytale ending for Schoeman

303 10.04.2016 Veteran Swimmer Roland Schoeman warming up at the National Aquatic Championships held the kings Park swimming Pool in Durban yesterday. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

303 10.04.2016 Veteran Swimmer Roland Schoeman warming up at the National Aquatic Championships held the kings Park swimming Pool in Durban yesterday. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng

Published Apr 18, 2016

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Johannesburg - Some seven years ago, Roland Schoeman and I spoke about writing his book. I sourced a publisher, had contracts drawn up, but for one reason or another, we never made it work.

Schoeman’s story has been told in bits and pieces down the years: a young man who began swimming competitively in his mid-teens to impress a girl. The death of his father in a car accident when he was in Standard Nine had a profound effect on him. “My mom came to me in my room and the words she told me will be forever ingrained in my memory: ‘Roland Mark, your father was in an accident’.

Those few words forever changed my life and still bring me to tears to this day,” Destiny Man wrote.

Schoeman was taking part in the provincial championships at the time. He insisted on continuing to compete and qualified for the national champs.His was not an easy upbringing nor career, but his has been a life less ordinary.

His record as a swimmer is extraordinary, his haul of three medals in Athens the biggest ever by a South African at an Olympics. He broke world records, he won world championships and he took Commonwealth Games medals. His start was phenomenal, one of the fastest in the world. It was his start and first leg that helped South Africa to one of its finest Olympic moments when the Awesome Foursome shocked the world.Schoeman ruffled feathers.

He and Swimming South Africa were never the best of friends. He was constantly outspoken on the lack of funding from South African authorities. He could not understand why South African sponsors did not rush to him. At the 2004 Games, after he had taken his final medal, he told journalists Qatar were offering him R20-million to swim for them.

Swimming South Africa said the deal was worth around R50-million a year before bonuses for world records. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Schoeman seriously considered it. At the end of 2005, he announced he had finally said no to Qatar.In 2006, after a race during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Schoeman told me how relieved he was he had not opted for the oil money.

He would struggle financially, but hearing his country’s national anthem while standing on the podium was reward enough.

On Saturday, his dream of becoming the first South African to take part in five Olympic Games came to an end in Durban. Schoeman has hinted he will continue to swim competitively no matter what. He is not yet done fighting against the dying of the light.

Useless/useful bit of information of the week

The LA Times has a graphic on every shot Kobe Bryant ever took and scored from. Bryant scored 30 699 field goals. His final came from “19 feet with 31 seconds left against the Utah Jazz.

During his 20 years with the Lakers, he fired up more than 30 000 shots, including the regular season and play-offs”. They did not include free throws. You can even buy the “A True Shooting Guard: Kobe Bryant Commemorative Sports Page” from the Times for just $59.95, which is a 14 percent discount. Bargain.

Word for the week

Transmutation: As in, “Transmutation Agreement”, which the sports ministry used this week in statement on the appointment of Allister Coetzee as Bok coach.

The “Transmutation Agreement” was, apparently a contract entered into by themselves and the South African Rugby Union. There are times when you should look at more than one definition of a word before using it.

Google has it as “the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form,” or the “the changing of one element into another by radioactive decay, nuclear bombardment, or similar processes”, and “the conversion or transformation of one species into another; the supposed alchemical process of changing base metals into gold”.

Perhaps the sports ministry want to turn the Boks into mutants. They could be the X-Men of rugby. Lions’ manifestoA few years ago, only die-hards would go to Ellis Park to watch the Lions play Super Rugby.

On Saturday, the Emirates Airline Park was packed. It’s become a rum day for the ruling party when the Lions can get a bigger crowd than the ANC. Also, the Lions play in a park sponsored by a company with its headquarters in Dubai, where, according to reports, a certain family has scarpered to.

The Star

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