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Based on South Africa’s impressive medal count at previous Olympics, our showing at the Tokyo Games was a major anticlimax. Team SA boasted a significant number of potential medallists, but in the end they proved to be a damp squib.
The three medals they brought home pale into insignificance next to the 10 that the team won in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.
However, it would be unfair to blame the athletes – for a number of reasons.
READ: Close-up | Dressing Team SA for Olympics no easy win in absence of shared nationhood
The Tokyo Games were the first modern-day Olympics to be staged under the dark cloud of a pandemic. This had a toll on the athletes’ mental wellbeing. Also, thanks to intermittent lockdowns across the globe, it was physically impossible for athletes to train adequately.
But these challenges should not spare our national umbrella sports body, the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), from taking some of the blame for the team’s lacklustre performance.
In the build-up to the Games, when leaders should have been busy preparing the team for Tokyo, the Sascoc heads were engaged in intense factional battles for control of the organisation. These battles only served to distract the leaders from the task at hand.
READ: Mahlatsi recounts torrid spell at Olympics
A new Sascoc board was only installed eight months before the Games began.
While the fighting raged, government refused to provide financial support. In the process, the Opex programme – which was established to support medal hopefuls with scientific and medical support – collapsed.
Sascoc has been struggling to raise sponsorship, save a few deals that came in the form of value-in-kind. We hope there is now stability within the organisation and that work has already begun to source funding for the 2024 Olympics.
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