Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 123, October 2019 | Page 31

OPINION
international season, i.e. May to September. But now she will miss provincial cross
country league races, and will not be selected for the provincial team because she
has not run enough races to qualify. The Cross Country Commission will only look
at their own events, because they are separate from track & field, so she misses
the national cross country championships, as well as the chance of selection for
the national cross country team. Should she have turned down selection for the
track team if her main aim was the cross country one? I know of a case where an
elite distance woman was not selected for a provincial track team because she had
not run enough league races, so she missed the national championships. She had
not run them because she was trying to make the national cross country team for
the World Champs, which were during the SA Track & Field season (March).
It is quickly evident that this is a mess. Athletes are confronted with difficult, if not
impossible, decisions to make, and eventually they will go where the money is:
On the overseas road circuit, or the ultras in SA. They may really want to do cross
country and track, but the divided system will defeat them.
road running had maintained a savings account, “just in case.” When the staff
were merged into one office, there was still the administrative distinction that
“road running administers the licence numbers.” It made no sense, because the
staff were employed by the provincial association, not its divisions, but the old
mentality persisted. Even when the staff were willing to buy into a new system, the
administrators would not. And that is what we have to this day, and what is doing
serious damage to the sport of athletics in this country.
Today, Athletics South Africa is still modelled on the three-pillar system of the
SAAAU. It has three commissions, Track & Field, Cross Country and Road Running.
Although they are constitutionally part of the same organisation and don’t have
their own bank accounts, they still run their ‘divisions’ as if they are autonomous.
Their constitution even has the three listed in logos on the cover page, as if they
were still the three pillars. In most provinces, or at least those that still cater for
track & field (and in some cases cross country), the same applies. Fixture lists are
still drawn up in isolation, and recently WPA was still listing track & field fixtures
separately from road running.
So why is this a bad thing? One just needs to ask why the IAAF did not adopt a
three-pillar system, if it is such a good thing. The simple answer is the obvious
fragmentation of the sport, with the inevitable conflicts that this creates. I will
explain what I mean by this, then show how athletics in South Africa is no longer, in
reality, the sport practiced internationally.
Difficult Choices
The first problem is how to categorise the participants and the events. Let’s start
from the viewpoint of an elite female athlete. She excels on the track over 5000m
and 10,000m, and during the cross country season, she also does that discipline,
where the standard distance is 10km. Then she also does a few road races,
concentrating on 10km and 21.1km. She’s equally good at all of these events,
because there are substantial similarities. So what is she? A track, cross country or
road athlete?
If the sport was properly co-ordinated, that would not make a difference, but
I’ll show how it does. To do so, I’ll give some actual examples. A few years
ago, Western Province held their half marathon championships in Strand. A few
kilometres away in Stellenbosch, the SA Track & Field Championships were being
held, where the 10,000m was one of the events. So, does our athlete do the half
marathon or the 10,000m? It comes
down to a choice between a national
medal, or prize money at the road race.
Both events are weakened because no-
one realised that there was a clash.
Then it is a regular occurrence that a
10km road race with big prize money is
held in the morning and a track meeting,
with a 5000m or 10,000m race, is
held in the afternoon. Which does our
athlete do? What does she do when the
provincial 10km road champs are in the
morning, and the 10,000m track champs
are in the afternoon?
Next, our athlete is selected for a national
track team to take part during the main
Dwindling Numbers
The demise of track & field (and cross country) is another story for another time,
but we can accept that it is a part of the sport that is dying in this country. Yes,
we still send athletes to the World Championships, but the numbers are getting
less and the disciplines fewer. Also, there are hardly any senior female track &
field athletes left. Now, before there is a knee-jerk reaction to tell me I am talking
nonsense – after all, schools athletics is still strong, isn’t it? – ask yourself how
many ASA regions (or provinces, as they are still called) host senior track & field
championships? And how many host senior cross country championships?
If the regions don’t care about holding competitions for senior athletes, how long
will it be before no-one is doing track & field anymore? Take away the universities,
and how many clubs still cater for track & field at the senior level? Take away the
schools, and what else is left? So why has this happened? Because under the
three-pillar system, we look at the sport in silos. If road running is strong, then at
least something is working. That is the current thinking.
Cross country is seen as the development arm of the sport, with the intention that
cross country runners eventually move over to the road. When I was president of
ASA, I was presented with a development plan by someone who was excited that
he had the answer to improving performance in athletics. His entire thinking was
to use cross country as the base for all athletics development. When I asked him
how we would develop hammer throwers or pole vaulters from cross country, he
looked at me blankly. Instead of having a plan to develop the sport of athletics, he
had a plan to develop distance running, and ultimately road running, not athletics
as a whole.
Square Pegs, Round Holes
This mentality that the sport is divided into distinct parts, instead of being one, has
had other, bizarre consequences. It started with race walking: Because it did not
fit neatly into the three pillars, it was shoved into one. So, for a long time in South
Africa, race walking was placed under track & field, but race walking, in its pure
form, takes place outside of a stadium. Track & field, nearly exclusively, takes place
inside a stadium. Fortunately, for the most part, race walking is recognised on its
own and not part of track & field, so that anomaly has generally been corrected.
Then we had the development of trail running, and that really blew the system
apart. Administrators like to control everything, and they don’t like change.
When trail running came along and
started to grow, the three-pillar system
administrators did not know what to do.
To begin with, they called it Trial Running
– it was clear they didn’t have a clue that
it was running on trails, because they had
never heard of a trail before.
They quickly learnt that this new thing
was not done in a stadium, and wasn’t
walking. It also wasn’t done on a road.
So, if it wasn’t track & field, and it
wasn’t road running, it had to be cross
country! Only, it isn’t. Trail running is
mostly single track running, and mostly
on mountainous terrain (although not
exclusively), while cross country is on
a lapped course, which is wide enough
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