Sascoc commits to providing more support for Olympic athletes

With the national squad having claimed six podium places in Paris, Team SA boss Leon Fleiser says more will be done to support South Africa’s Olympic athletes in an attempt to climb further up the medal table at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

After securing only three medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (one gold and two silver), Fleiser said team management were delighted with the all-round effort at the Paris Games which ended on Sunday, with the squad raking in one gold, three silver and two bronze to finish in a tie for 44th place in the final standings.

“We’re very happy with Team South Africa’s performance,” said Fleiser, who was the Team SA chef de mission in the French capital over the last few weeks. 

“We said we would beat Tokyo, and we’ve doubled Tokyo, so we’re extremely proud of what the athletes have done for us.”

More support

Fleiser, the general manager of high performance at the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc), admitted they had hoped to do more in the build-up to the Paris showpiece.

Having struggled to find funding for its Operation Excellence (Opex) programme in recent years, which provides assistance to elite athletes, Sascoc was not able to offer full support after the Tokyo showpiece.

Fleiser, however, said they were already looking ahead to the 2028 Olympics, and Sascoc intended to offer more support for athletes throughout the next four-year cycle.

“Now the hard work starts going towards Los Angeles (LA),” Fleiser said.

“We’ll be visiting LA in October to start our planning and we’ll be meeting with all the federations in the build-up to get Opex going through Bidvest (sponsor) and funding through the NLC (National Lotteries Commission) so we can assist the athletes over the next four-year cycle instead of one year before the Games.”

The SA team were set to return home on Tuesday morning, with an arrival ceremony being held at OR Tambo International at 8.30am.

Sascoc, with support from its partners and sponsors, will be paying over R2.1 million in incentives to the national team’s medallists.