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Bronze medal winning SA relay team
Team South Africa is not down in the dumps following another poor harvest from the World Athletics Championships in Japan Tuesday morning.
They ended an eight-year world championships medal drought, but the team of 49 athletes returned with just one medal, a bronze by the men’s four-by-400 metres relay team.
But the athletes believe that with better support and more investment, better returns are possible.
Only relatives, close friends and officials were at the airport to welcome the team home. South Africa’s 400 meters world record holder, Wayde van Niekerk, didn’t mince his words.
He says a smarter investment will yield better returns.
“We are grateful for what’s been done, but it’s obviously way off the par from where it can be. If you want gold medalists here, you’ve got to treat every individual as a gold medalist. You can’t expect guys to enter the country, coming back with gold medals. We’ve seen it with rugby, with cricket; if you want high quality, you have to invest in high quality. So, let’s support the guys so that we can start getting performances,” says Van Niekerk.
The medal harvest was poor, but there was a huge improvement in the number of athletes who reached the finals of their individual events. Team leader, Jean Verster, says from that perspective, Athletics South Africa is on the right track.
“Our whole goal working towards LA 2028 is to increase our depth. This was our biggest team, 49, I think, ever. Australia, as a guideline, had 86 qualified. So, we hope to qualify a lot more athletes. Yes, we would like more medals, but you can’t get medals if you don’t have finalists,” says Verster
ASA also needs to rethink its strategy ahead of the 2027 World Championships in China and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. This season was just too long for the elite athletes. They had to peak for the SA Champs in April and again for the World Championships five months later.
One athlete, who enjoyed a successful World Champs, is 27-year-old Zakithi Nene. He qualified for the 400 metres final and ran the anchor leg in the relay final, where the South Africans were denied gold by a whisker.
“The guys went out there and delivered. The guys that ran the heats as well. We knew what we wanted to achieve and what this team can achieve as well. We delivered in the pouring rain, ending the medal drought for South Africa,” says Nene.
What makes his performance even more remarkable is that he suffered a hamstring strain in Budapest just a month before the start of the World Championships.
