Where have all the good medals gone?

 

 Words: Nick van der Leek

So the Olympics have come and gone, and South Africa has returned from London with six medals. Don’t laugh, that’s five more medals than we got in Beijing, a year when even Zimbabwe (with four medals) had us eating Olympic dust (and spitting Chinese soot). And don’t you dare point fingers at our hopeful contenders either. I asked our triathlon champ, who was slated as a possible gold medallist, whether he gave 100% (he ended more than 2 minutes down on the winner). Richard Murray’s reply: “Get lost.”

We do seem a little lost, when you look at the company our medal tally keeps. We’re basically level with North Korea – a world pariah, one of the world’s most paranoid and poor societies. We’re also behind Cuba, another regime some of our heads of state are pals with.

On the other hand, it makes absolute sense that the world’s two superpowers are ruling the roost, the USA and China. Great Britain also did a fine job of setting up the appropriate courses for their horses; the United Kingdom finished the games in a very credible third. In fact, Europe overall featured prominently as a continent, whereas Africa shone darker than bronze. One does have to wonder why nations like Nigeria, with 160 million people, aren’t capable of producing a single champion.

If we’re going to pick on large countries without Olympic winners (i.e. losers), we could start with Indonesia and India. Indonesia has a similar sized population to the USA, numbering in the low hundreds of millions. Indonesia couldn’t manage a single gold, although they did manage to get two medals out of their two hundred million plus citizens. India, with 1.2 billion citizens, did slightly better, no golds, but one silver, and four bronze.

All very well (or terrible, depending on where you live), but let’s compare apples with apples, not with bananas (I hear you say). So let’s take populations of a similar size to ours, say, South Korea. How did they do? Well, they kicked our butts, finishing in the top 10 with 27 medals. What about our regular rivals, the Kiwis and Aussies? That’s not going to go down well either. New Zealand with barely a tenth of our population, produced double the number of medals we did, and Australia, with half the population, produced even more: 35 medals, they’re in 7th spot overall.

Africa, overall, was shabby at this Olympics. The Kenyans brought home the most metal (9 medals) followed by Ethiopia (7) and then us. After that you don’t want to know – it’s a freefall. Near the bottom there’s Tunisia with 3 medals, Egypt (population 82 million) has two, and Algeria, Morroco, Uganda and Botswana each have one. No medals anywhere else. Namibia – zip. Mozambique – zero. Zimbabwe – null. Zambia – nought. Malawi – not one. Tanzania, Lesotho, Libya and did I mention Nigeria – diddly squat.

Which brings us back to South Africa. Putting North Korea out of minds for the moment, 6 medals for 50 million doesn’t look good, as I say, next to New Zealand’s 13 medals with less than 5 million people. The Netherlands have 20 medals for 16.6 million. And USA and Britain show what is possible – over 100 medals and more than 60 respectively. Britain has ten times the number of medals we have, for less than the double the population size.

We have done better, of course. During the bad old days of Apartheid, Stockholm 1912, South Africans put the Boer War behind them and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps – finishing seventh on the overall medals table (four golds and two silvers). Eight years later, in Antwerp, we won a total of 10 medals, and ten again in 1952 in Helsinki.

Which is why our very own Chad Le Clos, beating the world’s greatest Olympian is no small achievement. But Chad must be wondering, given the lack of support that sent our most decorated Olympian (Roland Schoeman) to America, whether he should invest in a country with such a poor record. Let’s face it; despite attending his fourth Olympic Games, Schoeman got virtually no airtime. And despite turning down a multi-million dollar offer from Dubai, South Africa hasn’t rewarded Schoeman with the same devotion. We still aren’t even sure what he’s achieved. Most South Africans still don’t really know that Schoeman holds individual world records in swimming (in other words, he’s a walking, living, breathing, Olympic and world Champion). The average South African thinks Ryk Neethling is our best swimmer, except Neethling has never won an individual medal at the Olympics.

If South Africa is to get back onto the podium we ought first of all to know who our champions are, support them, and celebrate them. It includes financial support, and also moral support. But it starts with recognition. You’ve got to wonder why some of our best athletes (Zola Budd, Kepler Wessels, Kevin Pietersen and Benni Mccarthy) went to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Politics. It starts in poorly managed sports administrations (ASA, CSA etc). It ends in deplorable results.

Part of the formula for success is simply having a clear picture of what you want to achieve. Corruption and greed spoil our dreams, and invalidate the efforts and toil not only of athletes, but everyone pursuing their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.