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Johannesburg - There will be no place in South Africa's Commonwealth Games team for passengers, according to SASCOC president Gideon Sam, and there will be no tolerance for anything but the best from those who make the cut.
"We will not be soft and there will be no passengers in the team," Sam said after South Africa's Olympic governing body bade farewell to the Queen's Baton on the last stop of its relay around the country at SASCOC House in Melrose on Tuesday.
South Africa was fifth at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and Sam said the team would be expected to at least retain that position on the medals table in New Delhi in October.
"Even if we end up taking only 40 athletes, those 40 athletes will have the hearts and minds to defend our fifth place ranking, or improve on it."
Every member of the team, he added, would need to give their all to improve on that standing as SASCOC takes its first major step towards a hefty goal of 12 medals at the London 2012 Olympics.
"We will have to bring the athletes back on stretchers because there will be no reserves," Sam said, only half jokingly.
"If they have a broken leg or no air in their lungs, they must run."
The Queen's Baton, which contains a message for the Commonwealth Games athletes from Queen Elizabeth II, will pass through all of the 72 competing nations ahead the 19th staging of the quadrennial event which will be held in India for the first time.
The baton arrived in South Africa on Saturday and, after a four-day tour of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and the Free State, it was passed on to Lesotho on Tuesday.
