By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (August 13^th 2021)

Africa’s Obligations

The recently concluded 32^nd Summer Olympiad in Tokyo was very poor from Africa’s standpoint. The biggest problems, training facilities and opportunities are bad enough, but there are other issues too. Grassroots and school sport has been neglected for years. It is reflected in performance. Training facilities is just part of it. Competition and access to tracks are another. Without both facilities and competition talent cannot be nurtured and developed to a standard where they can compete at the highest level.

It is not about patriotism. Sport is a short career, meaning the earning potential of the best is short too. There’s no time for regrets, so those who develop and exploit their talent cannot be blamed for choosing the best options to utilise their talent and earning potential for themselves and those depending on them. So, isn’t the onus on Africa to develop the facilities they need, so they don’t need to travel to train and develop? If not, the gap will either get bigger or they will leave, and some will choose alternative nationalities. Others recognise that financial opportunities lie outside of Africa. This talent drain has affected Africa’s chances and will continue to do so.

Africa must learn to nurture and develop its own talent and offer competitive incentives or continue to haemorrhage talent and watch Africans stand on podiums listening to foreign national anthems. It isn’t all doom and gloom.

Tatjana Schoenmacher not only won South Africa’s only gold medal but set Africa’s only world record in the recently concluded Olympic Games. She won a silver too – surfer Bianca Buitendag’s silver made up the three medals South Africa won. That’s an awful return for a country that has a sports profile – Wayde van Niekerk’s injury and the reclassification that barred Caster Semanya from defending her title didn’t help, but still.

South Africa is one of the richer countries in Africa, but Shoenmacher and Buitendag apart, the 32^nd Olympiad was disastrous.

Talent Drain

Even Kenya loses talent. Years ago, Wilson Kipketer left for Denmark. He ended up setting records for the Scandinavian country rather than Kenya, although his citizenship did not come through in time for him to compete in the 1996 Olympic Games when he was the dominant athlete in the 800m at the time.

He never won Olympic gold but won a silver and bronze in the next two. He is the second fastest 800m runner of all time. Kipketer liked Denmark and wanted to stay. His desire to take Danish citizenship cost him his best chance of Olympic glory. Only the remarkable Kenyan athlete, David Rudisha, has run faster. Rudisha remained Kenyan and won gold in the Olympic Games of 2012 and 2016. He did not defend his title in Tokyo.

The Sprint Quandry

Nevertheless, for all its athletics prowess, neither Kenya nor Ethiopia has produced a world beater at the shorter distances. Interestingly, Namibia, colonised by Germany and then South Africa, leads Africa in this department. Teenager, Christine Mboma, was prevented from competing in the 400m because she had high testosterone levels even though it occurred naturally, but she stormed through in the 200m Final to set an Under-20 World Record while winning silver to Jamaica’s phenomenal Elaine Thompson-Herah who won the gold medals in both the 100m and 200m in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and retained both titles in Tokyo five years later.

The Jamaican achieved a double repeat, winning and retaining both Olympic sprint titles. Africa’s best in the sprints, Namibia’s Frank Fredericks achieved silver medals in the 100m and 200m in Barçelona in 1992 and repeated the feat in Atlanta four years later. It took world records to beat him in the Centennial Games, Donovan Bailey in the 100m and Michael Johnson in the 200m. He won the World Championship in 1993.

Racist Scandal

Most people think that Fredericks is the most successful African sprinter in Olympic history. Actually, there was an African gold medallist. It was 113 years ago in London’s first Olympiad, the 4^th of the Modern Era, but it should not have happened. South Africa’s Reggie Walker won that medal, but it came three years after the Cape Colony’s government declared that only white athletes could represent the country.

In 1904 Marathon runners, Len Taunyane and Jan Mashiani became the first Africans – they were black – complete an Olympic Marathon. They were runners in the Boer Wars and were prisoners of war on St Helena before signing up to perform Boer War re-enactments for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St Louis. The failure to attract the athletes of the world to St Louis resulted in some competitors in the Exposition’s Anthropology Games being recruited for the Olympic Games too. Despite their performances they were treated in a shamefully racist fashion on their return to South Africa. The International Olympic Committee failed to uphold Olympic ideals, allowing a disgraceful race ban to be implemented for over half a century.

Coming hot on the heels of the hijacking of the 3^rd Olympiad by white supremacist organisers of St Louis’ Louisiana Purchase Exposition, such blatant racism went against the Olympic ideals and should have resulted in a ban until and unless all South Africans were able to compete regardless of race.

Abysmal

Walker remains the only African sprinter to win Olympic gold – he is also the youngest, achieving that feat before he had turned 20.

The facilities to develop sprinters in Africa tells its own story. A 113-year wait is way too long but it shows little sign of ending unless Africa learns to nurture and develop and look after their sporting assets.

If not, exodus and mediocrity is the price it will pay.