The members of the South African contingent representing their country at the FINA World Championships this summer will have much lighter wallets by the end of the competition.
It was reported by the website Sport24 that the members of the South African team traveling to Barcelona will have to pay their own flight and accommodation costs if they wish to participate at the meet.
This news comes after the South African Swimming Federation has not been able to secure a major sponsor after losing a 1.25 million dollar a year agreement with the South African telecommunications company Telkom
Father and agent of Olympic Champion Chad Le Clos, Bert Le Clos told South Africa’s Sunday Times exactly what he thought of the situation, “It’s pathetic that you have to (buy) your own flight tickets.”
“It’s a disgrace when you consider the amount of medals and glory swimmers bring to this country. There are other teams, which I don’t want to point out, that get millions but bring back nothing.”
He has a very good point. At the 2012 Olympic Games South Africa won a total of six medals (3 gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze) half of those medals were won by the country’s swimmers.
Chad Le Clos won gold in the 200 butterfly and silver in the 100 butterfly while Cameron van der Burgh won gold in the 100 breaststroke.
Not only is this a troubling development within the South African Swimming Federation, but it is also disturbing to see the lack of communication between the country’s individual sports governing body and the sports minister Fikile Mbalula. While Swimming South Africa CEO Shaun Adriaanse has said to have been working on finding new sponsorship money Mbalula has said that he was unaware of the situation, although it appears he may have helped intervene was the funding from Telkom was lost.
Very few things are a bigger waste of tax dollars than spending money on swimmers to go to a meet. What happened to self-reliance (which includes individual sponsors)? I wonder why some people in the international swimming community think government money is an entitlement. Do some not understand the concept of limited government?
Anonymous – I think you may misunderstand the funding model for sports in most major countries…Swimming South Africa is funded by private sponsorships, membership and sanction fees, and by lottery distributions that are designated as being for athletics.
Whether or not you think the lottery system is fair or a good idea is a different conversation, but it’s not as if they’re taking tax dollars from citizens to fund the travel. People voluntarily contribute by buying lottery tickets. It’s really quite democratic, in fact.
Most we’ve spoken with have said the issue is specifically with how the Department of Sport allocates their dollars from said lottery money. Doesn’t appear that much of it goes to the athletes it was… Read more »
That’s crazy. From south Africa to barcelona, so expensive. How do they expect people that could possibly final but aren’t sure if they could to spend that kind of money on what could be a dud meet? Just crazy…
Certainly le clos & de burgh could have earnt $10,000 for a few swims by swimming in the bop Biliton series in Perth. prize money was generous.
By inviting Sth Africa the organisers were obviously hoping for them to get off their bums & take a direct flight.
No sympathy.
I think an “Anthony Ervin” style fundraising campaign might be in order for the South African contingent. I believe the international swimming community truly embraces and rallys around the highest possible level of competition; and can be generous when it comes to supporting that competition.
This is a much better April fools than the Ryan Cochrane article.