It has been a roller coaster year for local and South African Wrestling Federation referee, Charles Villet.
He has gone from being the only African referee to officiate at the Rio Olympics last year to being nominated for the Volunteer of the Year award at the South African Sports Awards. Now he has surpassed those achievements, and been appointed to the UWW Referee Commission by the United World Wrestling (UWW) organisation. He will be one of only four assistants, beating out hundreds of top candidates from all over the world.
The Commission represents the maximum award to any active referee and comes with the enormous responsibility of correctness and fair play towards not only wrestlers but to all members of the wrestling community.
“Being in Rio was one of the best experiences of my life. The security was top-notch and the organisation was amazing. As a referee, I was not allowed to mingle with the players or sight-see because of corruption fears, but this did not dampen my experience one bit. We did go out the day before the tournament was over. But to know that I was the only African wrestling referee in Rio still leaves me awestruck,” he said.
After Rio, Charles thought he would retire and focus on the development of wrestling and referees in South Africa. But that was not to be as he had to jet off to Bloemfontein in November to attend the prestigious South African Sports Awards. He was nominated in the Volunteer of the Year award category with Kim Pople and Carol Blignaut, and was seated next to top athletes such as Caster Semenya and Wayde van Niekerk. Although Charles lost out to Pople for the award, he has no regrets.
“It was amazing, because the sports fraternity has been good to me for more than 40 years and all I wanted to do was pay it back, give something back to my community – and being nominated was really special. All the hard work, sweat and tears that I have put in to make it this far have paid off,” he said.
It was two weeks later that he received the official invitation from the UWW Referee Commission, the only African to ever achieve this honour.
Charles’ main goal now is to focus on developing talented African referees and to have a South Africa wrestler in the next Olympics. He wants to use himself as inspiration for the youth on the continent that hard work pays off. He cemented these goals after a trip to the Ivory Coast, where he was invited to host a coaching clinic.
“The conditions there are poor and I had to start from the basics with my clinics as some had no prior knowledge or experience. However, I want to make it my goal to have more referees in the UWW Referee Commission and more referees invited to officiate in international tournaments and maybe even the Olympics. It’s all about dedication, passion and hard work,” said Charles.
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