If South African Paralympic sport is to return to the glory days of old, systems have to be put back in place and meaningful support offered, say three of the country’s former stars.
From 38 medals at Sydney 2000, South Africa’s haul has declined consistently at every Games to just six at Paris 2024.
Track athlete Dyan Buis, marathon and hand-cycle king Ernst van Dyk and breaststroke star Kevin Paul told the Sunday Times this week there were multiple factors for the decline. Some of them were external — like organisers merging and cutting down on the number of track-and-field categories — but they also identified problems with systems thwarting local aspirations.
Buis, the 400m T38 champion at Rio 2016 who had picked up two sprinting silvers and a long-jump bronze four years earlier, said the development of para-athletes was not happening as it used to. “I remember back when I started, there were development camps and … there’s nothing like that at the moment. I think a large-scale talent ID needs to be done.”
While South Africa’s efforts might have flagged over the years, other countries are taking the Paralympics more seriously. “The world has become a lot smaller,” says Van Dyk, who won medals in hand-cycling and wheelchair racing in track-and-field from 800m to the marathon from 2000 to 2016.
When he made his Paralympic debut at Barcelona 1992, there were 82 competing nations. In Paris, that number had more than doubled to 170.
Van Dyk — who is about to emigrate to the Netherlands after receiving a promotion at his Össur orthopaedics company — said schools used to prepare disabled athletes for their championships, and there would be a clear pathway through clubs, provinces and regions to the national level. “I think that mechanism has broken down,” he said.
Buis, a geography teacher, was a pupil at a mainstream school where there was no information about para-sport — and that’s still a problem. “I saw the Paralympics on TV; I saw for the first time people with my disability running on TV... I didn’t know where to go, who to ask. So I had to really do research to get to the right people.”
Paul, who played in the same age-group schools rugby team as future Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, also had a bumpy road into para-swimming.
He recounted going to a school on the outskirts of the city to be classified as a swimmer. “I stood in front of a lady, who I still think today wouldn’t know anything about swimming, and she just told me ‘okay, clap your hands, okay pretend you’re swimming’ — and that was my classification,” said Paul, a two-time Paralympic champion who now lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with his wife and new born son.
Realising it felt off, he and his family followed up with provincial swimming officials, and they quickly put them in contact with the right people. “I still sometimes get messages from parents … and I was shocked to hear that there was a boy with the exact same disability as me who wanted to go get classified, and was told not to get classified in case the muscle grows back.”
The advice was astonishing because the muscle doesn’t grow back. “There’s a lot of people in positions that don’t understand what is going on.”
It will take resources to get a competitor to international level, where they will need even more financial support.
Van Dyk, who won his first Paralympic medal at his third Games at Sydney 2000, said cash was critical. “That’s one of the reasons why I was able to win a gold medal in Rio in para-cycling, because we had very good funding... I was really ready and fit.”
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.