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Team SA has underachieved at the IAAF World Championships.
Things did not seem right from the beginning and, for that, one needs to understand the financial position of Athletics SA (ASA).
That the team only arrived three days before the men’s 100m (first round), men’s marathon and 10 000m finals on the first day of the competition was a recipe for failure.
The team certainly needed a pretournament camp to adapt to conditions, considering the six-hour time difference between South Africa and Beijing.
The 4x100m relay team stumbling in the heats and failing to finish their race yesterday brought to light the results of poor planning by the ASA.
It also raised the issue of poor communications between the association and the athletes.
The 4x100m team was entered into the competition. But the athletes confirmed yesterday that they only knew when they got to Beijing that they were going to run in the relay.
The ASA also tried to enter the 4x400m relay team when they were already in Beijing, but they couldn’t put together a decent group.
Anaso Jobodwana (200m); Akani Simbine (100m and 200m); Henricho Bruintjies (100m); and Antonio Alkana (100m hurdles) came to the championships focused only on their individual events.
They only got to train as a team the day before yesterday’s 4x100m heats.
Jobodwana was still recovering from running the 200m final in which he won bronze in a national record time of 19.87 seconds on Thursday.
The US-based sprinter said he sent messages to the ASA on two occasions to enquire if there was a relay team for the championships, but he did not get any answers until he arrived in Beijing.
Jobodwana had also asked in vain to be scratched from the 100m, which he had to run or face expulsion from the rest of the competition. He decided on a false start.
Paging through the champions’ team manual, it’s clear Team SA officials did not exercise the option of the competition rules that countries can withdraw athletes by 9am the day before they compete. This could have cost us a medal.
Jobodwana told City Press his false start in the 100m had tweaked his groin but “thanks to the good physio we had”, he was fit to run a medal-winning time in the 200m final. This was his target in Beijing, because he had just returned from injury.
Yes, he did run a qualifying time to be included for the 100m, but he never ran enough races this season to be entered for this event. The ASA could have checked with his coach first before entering him.
In future, administrators with sound performance-management skills should be considered to manage the team instead of board members.
Hopefully, all these mistakes will serve as good lessons and not to be repeated at the 2017 World Championships in London
