South Africa in Beijing 2008

The Olympics are now over and in South Africa is back to parliament. Its gonna be a tough long racial debate that is more likely to affect 2012 Olympics preparation.

To sum it up, we a country of 48 million people, we sent about 134 athletes, with an estimated budget of 64 million Rand, and after 4 years of preparation, we only managed to win one silver medal.

Forget politics; forget load shedding. There is only one explanation; our qualifying standard is not the same as the world-qualifying standard. Usain Bolt won 100m in 9.3 seconds, still South Africa is more likely to send athletes whose best time is 11 seconds to London in 2012. That time doesn’t even win you a bronze.
Norman Dlomo and Hendrick Ramaala said they were not prepared for such a tough race and that the guys were running the world time. Why didn’t they tell us up front so we could send better athletes? Talking about running world time, I mean the Olympic is not a national tournament and Ramaala should know better. I hate people who say they are not prepared after loosing. If you are not prepared tell us on time.

Talking about preparation. We use to participate in regional sports tournament in high school and we normally use to prepare a day or week before the competition. You take position number one on that day you qualify to go and compete with athletes from others provinces. The same thing when preparing for exam, November exam we start preparing in October.

When I said after four years of preparation, it was just about counting from the last Olympics to the next one. You might find that the preparation for the Olympic started mid 2006.

Back home as kids, you would only go to play football outside if you would eat there. That the spirit with South Africa parents. Every time you ask to go and play outside you get threatened with food and not getting the shoes that you have asked for. You find yourself with many family responsibilities in such a way that you don’t even have time to participate in sports. You sneak out, you are more likely to sleep on an empty stomach.

I also wonder how many schools have sport grounds in this country.

Kids love sports with passion but they are never given a chance to display their skills at a young age. People seem very disappointed with the team’s performance but these are the same people who don’t allow their kids to participate in sports because they want them to work in gardens and do all kinds of house work everyday.

Butana Kompela talks a lot but actually does nothing. The only thing he does is to check how many black athletes were selected.

I urge all South Africa parents to hire domestic workers at home if they can’t keep up with the house chores so kids can have time to participate in sports and explore their talents at a young age. To the government, action speaks louder than words.

Maybe we didn’t win because they Olympics were fake, I mean that how we think of Chinese.

London is waiting, go for gold South Africa.