No incentive scheme in place

2004-08-06 16:53

Larry Lombaard

Athens - South Africa's Olympians may compete for just honour and country at the 2004 Athens Olympics. No incentive scheme has been put in place for medal winners as the clock ticks towards the opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium next Friday.

No incentive scheme had been finalised by Friday, according to the SA Olympic team Chef de Mission Hajera Kajee. "We are still looking at an incentive scheme for medals," she said. "Nothing is in place yet. We are waiting for our partners (sponsors) to come through."

South Africa's 106 athletes at the Athens Olympics would be interested to know whether to gear themselves up for cash bonuses for medals, especially after the team to Sydney 2000 were offered R1m for gold, R500 000 for silver and R250 000 for bronze.

Kit sponsors Adidas came to the party in terms of clothing and shoes on Friday as the SA team streamed through their Athens headquarters at the Politia Tennis Club in the exclusive northern suburbs to be kitted out.

"This kit is absolutely amazing," enthused women's hockey captain Susan Webber. "We think it's Christmas with all the kit they gave us. Our playing kit especially, is superb."

Driver got lost

The handout, that included two pairs of top-of-the-range training shoes each and a wardrobe-load of casual and training wear, made up for a hectic start to their Friday as their bus driver got lost on the one hour trip to their training ground.

"As things turned out, we ended up training for about 15 minutes, so it was a bit of a waste," said Kerry Bee, the most-capped player in the women's squad. "We had to get out to the Adidas site for our kit to be first in line because we had to rush back for our warmup friendly against New Zealand in the afternoon."

Chief medical officer Wayne Derman revealed on Friday that world high jump champion Jacques Freitag had left for the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich on Friday morning after having recovered from an upper respiratory infection.

"The reason Jacques stayed behind was because we feared that he might have infected the other athletes. He's been treated by our medical team back home and he's been given an all-clear to compete in Zurich."

Freitag has fully recovered

Freitag, who recovered from a serious ankle injury in time to make the Olympic team, joined Hestrie Cloete, 800m runners Hezekiel Sepeng and Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, Llewellyn Herbert and Frantz Kruger for the IAAF showpiece in Zurich and will arrive with them in Athens over the weekend.

The athletes meanwhile enthused about their facilites in the Olympic Village, especially the training grounds and the top of the line gymnasium.

Derman was especially impressed with the medical technology available in the village and the Olympic city.

"Our technical support includes an ultra sound machine for the imaging of tissues, a bio feedback machine to measure the alfa-rhythm of brain waves to assist in relaxation methods for our athletes between training and performances and software that enables us to conduct imaging studies and which are given digitally. This we get on an e-film which we can feed directly back to our medical team in South Africa for assessments.

Ice baths for deep muscle recovery

"There's a rehabilitation gym on site and a setup that includes ice baths for deep muscle recovery and chilly-jumpers with ice pockets that the athletes can use to keep their temperature down between competition in the hot conditions."

Derman said that dope testing could take place at any moment. "We need to know where the athletes are at all times in case Wada officials pitch up for drug testing. They have told us of urine and blood testing."

Kajee said that since landing in Athens on Tuesday, work had been non-stop amongst her technical and logistics staff. "We have been focusing on making our athletes as comfortable as possible. There have been many technical and logistical arrangements to be finalised in the leadup to the opening ceremony."

On Saturday the team will be officially welcomed to the Olympic Village where the national flag will be raised followed by a welcome speech from the Olympic Village mayor.

Nocsa president Sam Ramsamy was expected to have arrived by Saturday morning and negotiations should then get to an advanced stage with Nocsa's list of sponsors for medal incentives for the athletes.

- SAPA