Lara van Niekerk gave up on her Paris Olympic dream on Saturday after a back injury forced her out of her final qualifying shot in Monaco.
The double Commonwealth Games champion — who had been struggling to recapture her form of two years ago — had swum 100m breaststroke qualifying times at two local galas last year.
But a bureaucratic blunder rendered them irrelevant because neither meet, including the 2023 national championship, had been registered as an Olympic qualifying event.
Van Niekerk had competed at the second leg of the Mare Nostrum series in Barcelona midweek, but yesterday withdrew before the heats in Monaco. “She hurt her back in Barcelona, and I don’t want to risk a worse injury,” said coach Eugene da Ponte, adding she would not attempt to qualify again before the window closes on June 23.
“Bit emotional for her, but we have decided to put the Olympics to bed for now after everything that has happened, and we will start working towards Los Angeles [2028].”
Her Paris omission is an indictment on Swimming South Africa.
Meanwhile, another case of poor local sports administration has come to the fore, this time in boxing.
The 2024 Olympics will be the third games in a row not to feature a South African boxer — this time because the South African National Boxing Organisation (Sanabo) threw in the towel by sending no fighters to the final qualifying tournament in Thailand, which ends today.
Sanabo’s thinking was that South African boxers were simply not good enough. “It has been unfortunate for our boxers that they have been competing against experienced boxers,” read a bizarrely worded statement by the federation recently.
It is the responsibility of the sport body to give its competitors the necessary experience because there aren’t qualifying tournaments for novices.
Sanabo’s other justification for leaving the team home — that “none of the 64 African boxers qualified” at a qualifying tournament in Italy in March — backfired on them with at least one African boxer in Bangkok certain to qualify.
Boxers from several African countries, including Mozambique and Zambia, qualified for Paris at the continental tournament last year.
Boxing was South Africa’s richest source of Olympic silverware before isolation in the 1960s, but since readmission in 1992 the sport has progressively circled its way deeper down the toilet.
Athletes must achieve minimum standards to get to the Olympics, but there’s no quality control when it comes to administrators.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.