OPINION: Low blow when mediocrity equates excellence

02.1015. Ockert de Villiers. Picture: Dumisani Sibeko

02.1015. Ockert de Villiers. Picture: Dumisani Sibeko

Published Nov 5, 2016

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I get it, the South African Sports Awards are supposed to foment a sense of national pride and promote excellence.

The Department of Sports and Recreation will never satisfy everybody when it comes to compiling a short-list of candidates while many question the existence of the awards.

The exorbitant cost of hosting the awards while the country has more pressing issues to deal with such as funding underprivileged and deserving students is cause for concern.

Over the last few years, I have paid little attention to the awards mostly because of the wasteful spending on a night that Minister Razzmatazz can show off his bling.

The nominations over the years has also seen deserving people overlooked while others get rewarded purely based on popular vote.

Minister Fikile Mbalula this week announced the 2016 Sports Awards nominees, which included Olympic champion and world 400m world record holder Wayde van Niekerk and fellow gold medallist Caster Semenya.

In general, I cannot find fault with the nominees in most of the categories concerning athletes as performances like those of Van Niekerk and Semenya are nothing short of spectacular.

The nomination for the National Federation-of-the-Year Award once again does not disappoint where mediocrity is once again celebrated.

If we are honest with ourselves this category should be scrapped as there are no deserving federations that tick all the boxes.

This year, Athletics SA, Rowing SA and Roller Sport SA have been nominated for the National Federation of the Year Award.

Both athletics and rowing produced the goods in terms of their contribution to South Africa’s medal haul at the Rio Olympic Games.

The rise of athletics is clear in the 17 nominations they received for the awards while the sport contributed four of the country’s 10 medals - its best at the Games since readmission.

But let’s look at the criteria used for a federation to be nominated for the awards.

“A National Federation of the Year may be nominated and considered for an award that has during the awards qualifying period provided a clear plan of growing and developing sport in schools in the Republic of South Africa.”

At the release of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on Transformation in Sport’s status report, ASA were one of the federations whose privileges to host or bid for major and mega-international tournaments were revoked.

This was largely due to missing deadlines or not making any submissions during the auditing process.

To earn a nomination, a federation also needed to demonstrate “substantial achievements that have been made possible by this National Federation’s involvement”.

While ASA argue that they played a significant role in their athletes’ successes, one could argue that they did the complete opposite.

The federation messed around with the qualifying criteria months before the Olympic Games, causing confusion among athletes, particularly the marathoners.

ASA retroactively requiring athletes to have participated at the national 42km championships in either 2014, 2015, or 2016.

The federation failed to qualify relay teams for the Olympics despite having the best sprinting talent the country has seen while they mysteriously did not select Akani Simbine for the 200m at the Games.

While ASA should be praised for steadying the ship, they do not deserve to be nominated for the Federation of the Year award.

But that argument could go for almost every single federation in this country.

Saturday Star

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