Athletics South Africa leaves out 13 athletes from Worlds with qualifying standard including Dominique Scott

They select a man for the women's 800m, and leave out actual women from the team.

Athletics South Africa makes Athletics Kenya seem wholesome and pure.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Unless you're a very poor country (not South Africa), there's no excuse not to send every qualified athlete to every international competition. Even then, you should let athletes hold fundraisers to pay their way.

You are only hurting your future performance by depriving athletes of the experience of international competition. As an American, I suppose I should be glad when Canada, the UK, SA and others come up with their own harder standards because they are only helping the US stay the top track and field nation, but as a fan I would always like to see the deepest competition possible.

Athletics SA has the money

No reason to not send athletes if they meet the mark

Not a good way to promote athletics nor is it much motivation to rising stars to know that even if they hit they standard, they might not even go

You'd think if the poster man of South Africa and potentially the World's next best athlete WVN speaks out (as I expected) then Athletics SA would come to their senses

If I'm not mistaken Dom Scott crushed the 10k standard (32:15, her time 31:51) so there's no reason they shouldn't have at least selected her in the 10k. She's in better form than last year PR'ing at 1500m, 3k, and 5k this year, but they selected her last year? She strikes me as someone who could potentially run 31:20 at World's assuming it's a spread out, hang on type of race.

Going out and getting the experience is good for a lot of these athletes even if they're not necessarily competing for medals. Getting personal best, having world class championships racing experience, and being able to promote yourself is crucial, but it's obvious Athletics SA doesn't care.

Good for WVN and Simbine for speaking out.

Seems like they've decided to not send any white athletes...

A. Frican wrote:

Seems like they've decided to not send any white athletes...

Who’d be a white person living in South Africa these days?

One of my neighbours is South African and she goes to visit her relatives once a year.

She tells me the white folk live in fear of robbery, attack or worse.

They have to live with armed security, razor wire round the walls, alarms, bars on all their windows, internal strong rooms, even the bedrooms have to have strong metal doors.

And that’s in one of the relatively ‘peaceful’ areas.

Rojo, your website's own re-cap of the Monaco meet said that the American women will be a non-factor at Worlds. Rowbury ran 8:33 at this meet, and Houlihan ran well, too. So the South African athletic federation is probably thinking the same thing: "Yeah, you hit the standard, but so what, it's still not fast enough to matter. We're tired of paying to send athletes who won't matter even when the pace is slow."

harsh, but true wrote:

Rojo, your website's own re-cap of the Monaco meet said that the American women will be a non-factor at Worlds. Rowbury ran 8:33 at this meet, and Houlihan ran well, too. So the South African athletic federation is probably thinking the same thing: "Yeah, you hit the standard, but so what, it's still not fast enough to matter. We're tired of paying to send athletes who won't matter even when the pace is slow."

First, you only have a 0% chance to win if you never run the race. Every Olympics or WC, the US gets a medal from someone who was not favored to be in the medals. No one would have favored Emily Enfeld to win bronze in Beijing, but she did.

Second, people learn how to handle the pressure, rounds, etc. of international competition through experience. Most US medalists were on a prior national team when they didn't medal before they actually medal at a later competition. A federation that sends everyone builds up the experience base that people need to medal later in their careers. Van Niekirk didn't make it out of the rounds at the WC in Moscow, but it was worth sending him because he used that experience in Beijing and Rio.

Third, if you are going to ask people to devote their lives to athletics, you need to give them some incentive and appropriate reward. Knowing that if you have the standard you will make the team is major incentive and keeps developing talents in the sport. That's where many future medalists will come from.

It looks like the appeal was denied, and no one was added from the list

Athletics SA will definitely be hated for this

The Swimmer wrote:

Athletics South Africa makes Athletics Kenya seem wholesome and pure.

Maybe wholesome because they actually send a whole team, but definitely not pure due to their doping past (and present for that matter)

WVN (and others) should tell the federation that he will not go if they don't send the ones who have qualified! That would send a message and be a good moral thing to do (lots of LR readers will not understand)! At least allow them to fund raise and pay their own way.

The federation is being very short-sighted. They need to go for development.

Some disgusting posts on this thread. Some awful decisions made by SA athletics administrators. Sad day.

I tought that there was foul play too, but in fact it is pretty straightforward.

Bizarrely, it seems like some people try make this looks like a race issue, when the majority of the athletes who had the standard and who were not selected are actually non-White (even amongst those names linked in the OP which somehow forgets quite a few name).

here is a link of all the SA athletes who hit a qualifying time and were not selected :

http://roadto.de/mycountry.php?nat=RSA

Keep in my mind that many of these "screwed" athletes barely got the standard in a rather weak event in their country. Does a female sprinter who barely run sub 23 over 200m deserves more her place that a 20"2 male sprinter simply because her event is incredibly weak ?

In the male 200m, the 6th ranked SA sprinter ran 20"27, a time that would have qualified him in pretty much every country in the World (including sprint powerhouse Jamaica), but he won't make the team because this event is stacked in his country.

I mean, do you know that the Bronze medallist in this event at the last Wch in 2015 (Jobodwana 19"87), behind Bolt & Gatlin is not even ranked in top five anymore. Yet he would still be much more threatening that many of those non selected athletes.

Pretty much all the athlete who have a chance of a medal or reaching a final were included in the original team, because they hit the (tougher) qualifying standard that was set by their federation several month ago (including a non-Black one one who shouldn't, because his standard was achieved during a competition where he tested positive afterwards).

BTW, several country have their own standards, if you've been following this sport for quite a long time this is nothing new.

brutal racism on this thread, but of all the occasions to spend money, Athletics SA is choosing the worst time to pinch pennies, the very occasion toward where all the athletic spending is geared.

If Scott did not run for Arkansas none of you would know who she is or care

The issue here is simply because athletes spoke out. Japan does the very same thing and nobody is trying to pressure them, Australia left out 20+ athletes of their teams anybody but did not met their OWN standard (even though they hit IAAF entry qual).

In fact it look s like pretty much every country bar the US set their very own standard, why should they send tourists if they don't want ?