Hestrie pulls out of All Africa games
Injuries have decimated the South African track and field athletics team for next month's All Africa Games in Nigeria.
Consequently, South Africa's hopes of successfully defending their title as the leading medal-winning nation from the previous Games, in Johannesburg in 1999, have proportionately diminished.
Among the 13 athletes who have withdrawn from the track and field team thus far was the potential for 10 or more medals in the October 4-18 Games in Abuja.
The latest big-name athlete to pull out is world women's high jump champion Hestrie Cloete, who returned from the recent IAAF World Athletics Final in Monte Carlo with a cold and minor lower back and foot injuries.
The 2003 World Woman Athlete of the Year was advised by her doctor at the weekend to withdraw or run the risk of picking up a stress fracture of the foot.
Cloete said recently that she did not want to go to the Games if competing in them in any way jeopardised her participation in 2004 Athens Olympics, which could well be her international swansong.
Cloete is not the only South Africa medal shoo-in to have opted out of the Games, though.
High hurdler Shaun Bownes and discus thrower Frantz Kruger, like Cloete, gold medallists at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games, have also withdrawn because of injuries.
All three of our men's 400m hurdlers - 2000 Sydney Olympics bronze medallist Llewellyn Herbert, Alwyn Myburgh and Ockert Cilliers - will be staying home when Team South Africa leave for Nigeria on Sunday, Herbert with an injury, the others because of studies and/or
exams.
And Surita Febbraio, a women's 400m hurdles finalist at the recent Paris world championships, is also injured, as are two of our elite athletes with a disability (EADs), Fanie Lombaard and Michael Louwrens.
Shot putter Janus Robberts, a silver medallist in Manchester in 2002, will also be missing because of studies.
In the same boat are 200m sprinter Leigh Julius and shot putter/discus thrower Maranelle du Toit, while hammer thrower Elmarie Knoetzen has withdrawn because of work commitments.
The absence of Febbraio, Herbert, Myburgh and Cilliers also harms South Africa's chances in the 4x400m relays.