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Not Ready To Play: South Africa’s Athletics Industry Slips

Not Ready To Play: South Africa’s Athletics Industry Slips

From CNBC

South Africa used to be home to a thriving youth athletics industry however the game has changed today due to a number of challenges, reports Farhaanah Mahomed.

“Our biggest challenge is really the amount of youth getting through the ranks to be able to develop them into national athletes,” Sydney Maree, former Olympian and co-chair of Corporate Sports Entertainment International told CNBC Africa on Friday.

He further stated that schools’ athletic programs are lacking the support they require for the sport to thrive once again.

Also, getting the right administrators and educated coached in to understand and push athletics programmes forward has been a challenge, which has resulted in a lack of sponsorships from the corporate world.

Ray Wicksell, former Olympian and chief executive officer of Ray Wicksell Consultancy, added that another challenge to the athletics field is that sports like rugby and cricket are well covered and highly publicised, leading to potential athletes moving to those fields rather than athletics.

“Television has changed things. There’s a lot of TV coverage of rugby, cricket and so forth so athletes are more inspired to be a good rugby or cricket player so you lose them for the Olympic Games,” he said.

Maree believes that the athletics sports industry needs to become more efficient and organized by getting educated administrators and coaches on board so that they can present youth athletics to the corporate world more confidently.

Read more at CNBC.