SOUTHERN AFRICA DOMINATES WORLD TRIATHLON?

Is this guy on the funny juice? Surely he can’t be serious? No funny juice just yet and I am yes I deadly serious. Current Men’s Olympic Champion, Jan Frodeno born and bred in South Africa. Current 70.3 World Triathlon Champion, Terenzo Bozzoni born and bred in South Africa. Current US Xterra Tri Series Champion, Conrad Stoltz, born and bred in South Africa. This list read likes a who’s who of triathlon and these are only some of the names I know of. There may be plenty more where these came from.

Let me paint a little picture here before I get into a lot more detail on how a small country at the bottom end of the African continent can deliver up so many world class triathletes.

South (ern) African triathlon (And I include Zimbabwe and Namibia into this equation) is not exactly a top level sport in these countries. It is dominated by the traditional Commonwealth sports (by and large from the British colonial days) such as cricket, rugby, soccer and some of the lesser known ball sports. Triathlon does not even make a blip on the sports radar screen. The money to develop the sport is just not there and all the athletes generally, have a really hard time carving out any existence as a recognised bona fide sportsman. Aside from that, the region has many other problems that one will need to face on an almost daily basis. The crime situation is pretty bad (but in my opinion a little over exaggerated) and the general population do not live affluent lives, so there is plenty poverty in existence.

So apart from the normal daily worries that your readers would be subjected too, a triathlete from this neck of the woods (may) have to worry about possibly getting mugged, hi-jacked, knocked off their bike and/or about finding the money just to fund their passion for the sport of triathlon.

Now let’s come back to the triathletes we know about and why they have succeeded in making a name for themselves on the world stage. I do not know the full stories behind Jan Frodeno and Terenzo Bozzoni as to when exactly they lived in South Africa and why they left to take up a citizenship of another country. What I do know is that they lived for a fare amount of years in this country before heading off to greener triathlon pastures. I still remember Jan being interviewed after one of the World Cup triathlons down in Richards Bay and the South African twang accent was clearly evident even before I even knew who he was and what his background entailed. Terenzo was a little trickier as I only found out that he was originally from South Africa because my niece who was living in New Zealand at the time, was in one of his classes at the local high school. I bet you not many people who follow triathlon know that these 2 great athletes are a product from a country that has a triathlon population of a few hundred. I guess that’s nobodies fault at all, these guys left the country when they were pretty young and have grown up as fully fledged citizens of their adopted homelands anyway. In a recent interview with Triathlete, Terenzo is mentioned as an Italian immigrant as opposed to born in South Africa. Would these 2 athletes have reached the top level had they stayed in South Africa? I doubt it, Bozzoni mentions bare-foot water skiing at his sport before dabbling in triathlon. South Africa due to its fantastic warm climate, produces some of the best bare-footers in the world As for Frodeno, I am not sure where his roots lie. The sad fact is that South Africa does not posses the developmental structures and funding at present, to deliver from junior level up, world class triathletes well into the future. There are of course exceptions and Conrad Stoltz is one of them. He is true to his country and still flies the flag when he races on the Xterra World Stage. He has managed to earn a great deal of respect from his fellow pros as an awesome competitor and “hard” man of off-road triathlon. His history is pretty much the same as most triathletes world-wide. Starting off in the junior ranks, he bobbed and weaved his way through the years of internship that got him onto the start line at 2 Olympic Game Triathlon events. No mean feat in itself, he still continues to dominate the US off road triathlon circuit with a certain degree of authority. He is as South African as they come and will not easily give away his citizenship to represent another country. Recently Hendrik De Villiers with a 4th place finish at last years World Championships held in Vancouver, has also shown that with limited resources, the country and region can still produce athletes at the highest level.
I can only imagine what could potentially be achieved from this small country, should they have a triathlon program at their disposal similar to some of the big dominating nations like GBR, Germany, AUS and NZ.

Our 2 best exports in recent times (both now retired) would have to be Simon Lessing and Paula Newbie-Fraser. Although Paula represented Zimbabwe, I still classify her as “one of us” because the 2 countries are so inter twined in history that they may as well have been one.

Simon Lessing is truly one of the best all round triathletes the world has ever produced. He left South Africa as a 17yr old to further his studies and triathlon career. This guy has pretty much won everything imaginable (bar an Olympic Gold which was only possible from 2000 onwards anyway). He was triathlon king in during the nineties and was almost un-beatable. I remember racing against him (or rather more kindly put, being in the same race as him) back in the heydays of the Iron Tour. He won every stage, all the money and walked off with a few cars as spare change. The most talented and complete triathlete you will ever meet. What can be said about Paula? She is still the queen of Kona and it will take a long time before some other women dominates the world of ironman like she did a few years back. Chrissie could be one of those athletes but she still has many miles to log before she can even step into Paul’s shoes to take up that mantle. Both these triathletes have their roots set deep in African soil with many potential others I have not even mentioned.

So what makes these guys and girls so special and what do we feed them in Africa? I am not sure of an exact answer but I do know that if you come from Africa, you have a tough mentality ingrained into your psyche and this must surely help when it comes to toughing it out on the world triathlon stage. Much the same as the Aussie and Kiwi fighting grit, Southern Africans possess the same type of determination, that see many of them taking on and beating the world best triathletes.

I wonder what would/could have happened had Roger Federer (born in South Africa) decided to take up triathlon instead of tennis.