The fallout from Team South Africa's Beijing Olympics is bound to continue for a couple of weeks at least before we arrive in London in four years' time in the same shape as we did in Beijing earlier this month... Sadly, it seems to be a reality of sport in this country because we never seem to learn from our mistakes.

So who is too blame for our dismal showing at the 2008 Games?

Sascoc, the Ministry of Sport, corporate sponsors and government in general certainly deserve the criticism they have received this month — their effort in preparing the team has been bumbling at best, as they lurched from one PR horror show to the next.

'Ikhaya' was a mess, our uniforms were atrocious and the general organisation was poor. (Natalie du Toit — one of the darlings of the worldwide media — reportedly had to travel two hours from her hotel to the site of her event).

But while I am happy in joining in the chorus of criticism of all of those mentioned above, it is also worth mentioning that the South African fans need to carry the can on our team's performances as well.

Every four years we build up our Olympic athletes ahead of the Games, we put them on a pedestal, label them medal hopes and then spend the next three weeks tearing them apart for not performing against the world's best. We criticise the successful ones for having the audacity to make money off commercials, banking off their previous success, despite — sometimes in the same breath — claiming that they do not get enough funding to succeed in the first place.

Once we are done with the athletes, we turn on the administrators, blaming them for our team's failure. They do nothing to help our teams, they do not give them the funding they deserve, and they enforce quotas on them as well! They pay too much attention to rugby, cricket and soccer, while giving the rest of sports the cold shoulder.

All true, of course, but ask yourself this: when last did you attend the South African short-course swimming championships? When last did you go and support the men's or women's national hockey teams? Did you even know that we had a competitor in the BMX and mountain biking races?

What I am getting at is if we want money to come into the lesser sports in South Africa, we, as the fans, need to start showing an interest in them. Sponsors are not going to get involved if there is nobody turning up to watch. The fact that Spar has got behind the women's hockey team and Telkom are investing in our swimming is fantastic, but we all know it is not enough.

There is a reason our rugby and cricket teams are consistently ranked amongst the world's best. It is because the fans are there — regardless of the state of play — and the television cameras and money follow the fans.

In Europe, over 20 000 people turn up to watch the canoeing world champs. In America, thousands pitch up to watch their athletes take part. It is no coincidence that it was European countries that dominated the medals in the canoeing and that America did the same in the athletics.

It is time that we give our athletes, swimmers and others our unconditional support, not just once every four years' worth of over-inflated expectations. Once we do this we will have a right to complain about their poor showing.

And I include myself in this as well.

  • Is Rob barking up the wrong tree? Or is the pressure too much for our athletes to cope with? Leave a comment below.


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