If Roland Schoeman was an Australian, French, or an American citizen, he would be a swimming millionaire. Instead he is is a middle class, South African, swimmer who has had to deal with extraordinary adversity by way of little economic support, threats and insults among other hardships from his very own sports governing body.But get this: Some of his team members have gone through worse.
Snippets from Sport 24 website: "... Beijing - South African sporting authorities left Natalie du Toit badly in the lurch only hours before her historic Olympic debut.[Open water swimmer missing a leg.]
They among others allegedly:
• Refused to find her accommodation near her competition venue
• Screamed at her and her coach when they asked for the help of a translator of the South African Sport Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC)
• Forced her to wear a sponsor's shoes with uncomfortable heels even though she couldn't walk with them due to her disability
These revelations come amid serious criticism of the poor performance by SA athletes in Beijing. [...]
"... Ryk Neethling told how he had to break up a fight between the SA swimming captain Gerhard Zandberg and Roland Schoeman about comments that Zandberg had made. After Neethling tried to make peace, he feared that Swimming SA's head coach Dirk Lange would hit him. ..." [Link]
5 comments:
Schoeman and Neethling should just come back to Tucson and train with Frank Busch...
sad and frustrating situation.
Here in Mexico we have Ivan Lopez, who is ranked on top 5 open waters swimmers.
The Mexican swim federation refused to pay him the trip to China. He managed to get a sponsor but the sponsor let him know the approval 15 days before the competion.
Way too late.
If any of your swimmers have difficulty raising money to go swim, I will post it a note on the blog asking for donations to a pay pal account under the auspices of Mexican Swimming. That really breaks my heart that this happened.
Which brings me to something I've been thinking about this entire month. How much of Team USA's dominance at the pool is raw talent, and how much of it is the massive support machine around the sport here?
Yes, swimming in the USA is all abut the support machine that revolves around it. This ranges from backyard pools, city swim teams, school swim teams and college.
One American swimmer who left TYR to wear a Speedo LZR at trials and beyond was reported to have given up an $80k per year salary. Though the swimmer was an Olympian, they certainly were not at the "Roland Schoeman" level. $80k is certainly not an astronomical figure but it is more than the average household income in the United States. (Places like L.A. where I live and New York may differ.)
Yes, there is a machine here and more opportunities.
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