SASCOC celebrate yet another successful year

SASCOC celebrate another successful year, one of the busiest to date for SASCOC with the delivery of no less than four South African teams to multi-coded events around the globe.

 At a press conference at Olympic House on Tuesday, 18 November the country’s Olympic governing body looked back at the year in sport.

The ongoing OPEX (Operation Excellence) programme was also reviewed. Out of the 82 athletes on the programme, 58 remained but some of the athletes dropped off OPEX and these will be supported through the National Academy System. This programme identifies and supports prospective Olympic and Paralympic medallists by means of financial assistance, and through the payment of medical and training expenses.

In terms of multi-coded events, first up in May, were the 2nd African Youth Games in Gaborone, Botswana. Then followed the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland in late July and the Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China at the end of August.

The final event of the year are the African Union Region 5 Games, scheduled to be hosted by Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in early December.

The Youth Games in Botswana saw South Africa being the winner of many medals at the Games. Moving on to Scotland, the team had extremely successful Games, substantially improving their medal tally from the previous Games in Delhi four years previously. The medal count was 33 and 40 respectively.

What was most encouraging for Team South Africa was that the Commonwealth medals came across a broader spectrum of sports – 10 in all, compared to seven codes in Delhi.

Back to the future and South Africa also sent a team to the second edition of the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing. Despite the team only winning one medal – Gezelle Magerman’s gold in the 400m hurdles event – the occasion proved invaluable in terms of the country’s future Olympians being exposed to the highest level of international competition as well as competing away from home on foreign soil.

SASCOC are now putting the final touches to the last multi-coded event of the year, the African Union Region 5 Games in Bulawayo.

A team of more than 235 will travel north and take part in eight different sports codes. South Africa have traditionally topped the medals table in all editions of this competition, previously known as the Zone VI Games, and will be looking to do the same on this occasion.

These Games are traditionally a feeder event into the senior ranks and many previous team members have gone on to bring honour to South Africa at the highest levels.

Off the field of play, one of the highlights of the sporting year was the gala dinner at Olympic House earlier this year where close to 70 sports heroes and heroines were honoured for their contribution to South African sport.

In a year which saw South Africa celebrating 20 years of democracy, SASCOC honoured the men and women who all had their part to play in the sporting spectrum, both during the years of struggle against apartheid and in the rainbow nation’s return to the international sporting fold.

Those honoured, all received a special gift of a Nelson Mandela portrait as a token of appreciation for their efforts. Other important occasions for a busy SASCOC year were the visit of champion boxer Floyd Mayweather while another successful Olympic Day was staged in Ivory Park, Johannesburg. Add to that their hosting of the Chinese Taipei women’s tug-of-war team for a two-week visit and it all adds up to one busy year for the country’s Olympic governing body.

Going back to the OPEX programme, and evaluation of the OPEX squad is done after every six months. SASCOC evaluate athletes’ key performances and determine which athletes will continue to be supported.

SASCOC President Gideon Sam highlighted that the OPEX programme for the London Olympics and Paralympics was definitely part of the reason for South Africa’s successful medal haul. This is why SASCOC is sticking to the programme on the build-up for Rio 2016. (List of Opex athletes is in the annexure at the end of the media release.)

During the year 2014, SASCOC continued to work in partnership with other National Olympic Committees (NOCs) around the world, something that is always encouraged by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The country’s macro sports body is currently hosting the Uganda Olympic Committee for a two-day visit, in order to exchange and share ideas on how they run their NOCs.

An agreement was signed between the two NOCs to foster stronger relationships in terms of learning from each other.

SASCOC is also exploring partnerships with Burundi and Serbia NOCs.

SASCOC President, Gideon Sam, ‘We continue to focus on our Federations to deliver the best athletes for all our competitions. We do this through Opex, support for our coaches and also ensuring that our Federations are active in the nine political provinces.’

‘To achieve this, we need staff that is dedicated and passionate about sport. It has been a tough year but our team at SASCOC has given off their best in supporting the Federations,’ Sam added.

Says SASCOC CEO, Tubby Reddy: ‘The year of 2014 has been one filled with so much activity in terms of sports events. We are proud that as the nation’s macro sports body, we delivered our teams successfully to different multi code events and we have noted a great improvement in our team’s performances.’

‘We continue developing strategies and partner with various NOCs in order to share ideas on how to keep enhancing both our sport administration and performance in South Africa.’

‘With only a year and a few months left to Rio 2016 Olympics, we continue supporting our athletes through programmes such as OPEX, so that they fully prepare for this prestigious event and do the country proud by achieving the best on the international arena.’

‘We are still reviewing some of the omitted athletes to ascertain if they could be considered under the National Academy support programme.  This will enable them to continue preparing with the aim of qualifying for Rio 2016 at next year’s 2016 qualification events, specifically World Championships,’ Reddy concluded.

 ANNEXURE

After review the OPEX Olympic stats are as follows:

Sport Breakdown

The Paralympic stats are as follows:

Sport Breakdown

The below tables show athletes who are currently on the programme after the September 2014 review: