TRACK AND FIELD
Athletics SA bungles leave Wayde holding baton
Athletics SA’s bungling at home is getting noticed abroad‚ although it was poor Wayde van Niekerk who had to field a question about why the nation had not qualified a men’s 4x100m relay team for the world championships in London. A journalist at the Diamond League media conference in Lausanne on Wednesday asked Van Niekerk to explain why SA had no relay squad despite having five 100m runners clocking between 9.9sec and 10.10sec. That is a good question. With that sort of firepower, a team should be gunning for podium finishes‚ but the said media man was obviously unfamiliar with the operational methods of the national federation in SA. In 2015, Athletics SA appointed a coach with limited experience to handle the relay at the world championships in Beijing‚ and the team dropped the baton at the first handover. In 2016, Athletics SA tried to assemble a squad too late into the season‚ by which time athletes were deep into their training and racing schedules and they were unable to qual...
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