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Cape Town - Chad le Clos’ former swimming coach Graham Hill hinted in a video that South Africa’s most successful swimmer might be headed abroad.
Hill, who has begun to release a series of YouTube videos, opened up in an episode about the South African talent pool and how the country is losing them to the United States.
“At the moment I think we are falling behind the rest of the world, our sports are slipping, our rankings are going down," he said on the second episode of The Hill.
"We are not able to get our women (swimmers) up to the strength of the rest of the world. We are starting to lose our swimmers to the US again and yet we have the talent.
“We had Wayde (van Niekerk) and Caster (Semenya). We had great results in Rio, but still it wasn’t enough.
“We had the greatest swimming Olympian come out of Lahee Park and now he is gone. We need to take that responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Lahee Performance Park is based in Pinetwon, Durban and is Hill's training facility where he still coaches athletes like Myles Brown, Michelle Weber and Calvyn Justus - all who participated in the Rio Games.
As the video ends with “to be continued” an image of a young Le Clos pops up with a caption of: “South Africa’s Greatest Swimmer in History”.
Hill and Le Clos parted ways in September having spent 14 years working together.
Le Clos cited that he wanted to “start looking to find a new structure for 2017” and with the world at his finger tips, could South Africa’s most successful swimmer head to the US?
The 24-year-old became the first male swimmer ever to get 100 gold medals at the Swimming World Cup, capping off an amazing season after winning two silver medals in Rio Olympic Games.
WATCH full video below:
