South Africa's Chad le Clos will be hoping for an impressive performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics South Africa's Chad le Clos will be hoping for an impressive performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Photo: Swimming SA on X
As elite South African athletes compete at the Paris Olympic Games, in their quest to win the prestigious gold medal, the lack of transformation in the sport of swimming in the country has again been exposed.
South Africa has never had a person of colour representing the country in swimming at the Olympic Games and that trend has continued into 2024. All South Africa's representatives in the various swimming disciplines in Paris are white.
In 2020 former sports minister Nathi Mthethwa chastised Swimming South Africa and Hockey South Africa for failing to meet the set transformation targets.
Responding to the criticism at the time, Swimming South Africa president Alan Fritz conceded that the organisation had failed to meet the required targets, but added that the poor state of swimming facilities in the country also contributed to the problem.
"We accept that we have failed to meet our transformation targets. Swimming is very different to just creating a soccer field or cricket field or any other sport, for that matter. We require facilities to be able to teach people to swim," he said in an interview with broadcaster eNCA.
Since then, however, South Africa has continued to produce world-class white swimmers such as Tatjana Smith, Chad le Clos and Pieter Coetze.
The country continues to struggle to produce world-class swimmers of colour that can compete at global sporting events such as the Olympic Games.
Earlier this year South Africa’s 15-man T20 World Cup squad made headlines for a lack of diversity. The squad had just one black African in fast bowler Kagiso Rabada.
IOL Sport
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