It still sticks in the craw that the 2022 Commonwealth Games will be held in Birmingham and not Durban. It may be the first time the winning bidder in a one-horse race lost the right to host one of the biggest multisport events on the planet.
How we lost is one of the most farcical in SA’s long list of sporting farces. SA missed deadlines, numbers were fudged and promises of financial backing were broken. It was an expensive cock-up from the start. They hadn’t established a local organising committee within 180 days of being awarded the games. They missed the first payment and subsequent payments, and hadn’t bothered to sign the host city contract.
Alec Moemi, the director-general of sport and recreation, presented a budget of just R4.8bn to the Treasury, which was strange as the bid committee told the Commonwealth Games Federation it had budgeted R6.4bn for 2022. Apparently, Moemi was well aware of the amount, but did not believe the Treasury would go for the larger one.
But while the politicians and administrators tied themselves in knots, the athletes just keep on keeping on, because the Commonwealth Games offers an important step to the Olympics.
In 2010 in New Delhi a teenage Chad le Clos won SA’s first gold medal of the games on the first day of the swimming meet, breaking the games record in the 200m butterfly. Two years later at the London Olympics, he would go on to beat Michael Phelps.
After Cameron van der Burgh won gold in the 100m breaststroke, he lifted up his hands to show the words “Ke Nako” written on his hands. “It’s our time,” which was the mantra of the 2010 World Cup. In London in 2012, he won gold in the 100m and broke the world record.
Tatjana Schoenmaker won two gold medals at the Gold Coast in 2018, then gold and silver in Tokyo 2021, breaking Olympic and world records along the way.
The worth of the games have been debated and dissected. In the three games I attended they showed how they can display the best of a city and a people (Melbourne and Glasgow), and how corruption and incompetence can leave a bad taste (Delhi).
Will SA get a chance again? Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) regional vice-president Miriam Moyo thinks so: “Definitely, Africa will host these Games one of these days,” she told BBC Sport Africa.
“SA attempted to host but things did not work out. That’s the number one sign to show that Africa would want to host. I’m sure one day, maybe SA may come on board.”
Here’s hoping. Ke Nako, and all that.
• The first golfer I ever wrote about at the beginning of my career in sports journalism was Mandy Adamson. I was at the Benoni City Times and Mandy was the superstar playing out of the Benoni Country Club. She was still an amateur then, but what an amateur.
Three-time amateur champion of SA and winner of multiple tournaments. Each week, I had to choose the sports star of the week for the sponsored ear at the top of the back page and Mandy cracked the nod for that many times.
She turned professional shortly after I left the City Times, and I watched her career blossom as she won the SA Open three times. In 2002, my then colleague Grant Winter wrote in The Star: “Mandy Adamson, to borrow an old phrase, brought the famous, old Houghton Golf Club course to its knees with a sensational eight-under-par 64 in the second round of the Nedbank SA Ladies Masters on Thursday.
“Not only was this a course record and the best 18-hole stretch of Adamson’s career, but it is also believed to be the lowest competitive round in the history of SA women’s professional golf.”
It was the fourth and final event of the Nedbank Ladies Professional Tour and Mandy won at Houghton, making it three wins from four.
It was, wrote Winter, a “remarkable” achievement. Mandy went into coaching after she retired and is credited with growing women’s golf in SA through her love of the sport and her dedication.
Mandy died on Tuesday after a battle with cancer, having lived a life and left a legacy that, as Winter put it perfectly, was remarkable.
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