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5 swimmers in Games finals?
23/04/2008 22:13 - (SA)
Wilhelm de Swardt , Beeld
Pretoria - In 2004, no female swimmer was good enough to represent South Africa at the Olympic Games. This year, seven will compete in Beijing.
Four years ago, only seven SA swimmers qualified for the Athens Olympics; this year 20 achieved qualifying standards.
Rushdee Warley, SA Swimming's team manager, said on Wednesday something drastic had to be done after the 2004 Games to improve the standard of swimming in South Africa.
The result was that 13 SA men and 7 women qualified to go to Beijing, despite markedly tougher standards.
Warley ascribed the success to early identification of talent and providing promising swimmers with more opportunities to compete internationally.
"I'm excited about our swimming team," he said. "It is actually a very young team. Some of them may be able to swim at the 2012 and even the 2016 Olympics."
Dirk Lange, Swimming SA's chief coach, was reluctant to speculate about the number of medals South Africa could win in Beijing.
"I'm convinced we'll do better than in Athens, when only Roland Schoeman and the 4x100 freestyle relay team reached the finals," he said.
"I believe at least five of our swimmers will go through to the finals. And everyone knows anything can happen when you're swimming in a final."
May have fallen behind
Four years ago, Lyndon Ferns, Ryk Neethling, Schoeman and Darian Townsend produced South Africa's golden moment when they won the relay. All of them are in the team again.
But Lange is not so sure that the South Africans can win gold again. "To be honest, I'm a little worried about the relay team's chances.
"I'm not convinced we still have one of the best relay teams. We may have fallen behind somewhat.
"I was hoping we could use the recent short-course championships in Manchester as mini trials to get an idea what the team is capable of and which swimmers should be considered for the relay team, but things did not work out that way," Lange said.
The team:
Women: Kathryn Meaklim, Melissa Corfe, Jessica Pengelly, Lize-Mari Retief, Amanda Loots, Wendy Trott and Suzaan van Biljon.
Men: Cameron van der Burgh, Darian Townsend, Gerhard Zandberg, George du Rand, Gideon Louw, Jean Basson, Lyndon Ferns, Neil Versfeld, Riaan Schoeman, Roland Schoeman, Ryk Neethling, Troyden Prinsloo and William Diering.
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