18 The Times Monday March 31 | 20 14 S P O RT SA could learn from Ja m a i c a n s JA M A I CA ’S National High School Track and Field Cham- pionships, known to locals sim- ply as “Ch a mp s ”, is an event that, understandably, barely registers a blip on the Richter Scale of most South Africans. But for those involved in track and field, it’s a seismic event. For it is at this five-day sports event that 40 000 wildly best-endowed and most-skilled enthusiastic spectators cram can excel. Competitive systems into a 35 000-seater stadium to like the Jamaican school cham- get a first glimpse of their pionships provide exposure to future Olympic champions. competition, and the sport’s “Ch a mp s ” is Jamaica’s equivalent of “survival of the largest sports event by some f i tt e st ” drives the progressive distance, and is one of the pri- emergence of the very best. mary vehicles through which This selection and competi- this relatively tiny island has tion process is one of South delivered the sprinting dom- Africa’s great rugby advan- inance most of us recognise in tages. Driven by competitive Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake and schools, and funnelled through Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. Craven Weeks, we benefit enor- The relevance of “Ch a mp s ” mously from the constant com- for those outside athletics is petition that ultimately reveals that it demonstrates the three the top 50 players who will go key requirements for elite ath- on to earn professional con- lete development. They are: tracts and enter the Springbok aspiration or imitation; selec- selection pool each year. SA tion; and viability. It is these football, on the other hand, three boxes that must be ticked lacks this advantage. in order to produce world-class The final box is viability. If a sporting talent. Where nations nation is asking an athlete to or teams have failed, it is pursue a career in a sport, then because one or more of these it has to make that career boxes has not been checked. choice viable. As much as we Aspiration is what binds want to do it for the love of the game, this is not a realistic ideal when the rest of the world Doing it for the has professional sport. An 18-year-old stands at the cross- love of the roads of his or her life and, in one direction, lies future study game is not a and a possible career as a den- ‘ realistic ideal tist, lawyer, accountant. If we want them to go in the other direction then we must Indian cricket, South African provide support that at least rugby, Spanish clay court ten- ensures they are not liabilities nis and Jamaican sprinting. It to someone else (usually fam- is that intangible quality that ily). This rarely happens for allows children to see, rather sports other than cricket and than imagine, what is possible rugby in SA and one shudders and compels them to pursue to think how many world-class the training required to get athletes have aspired to there. When Usain Bolt or achievement, been selected, Asafa Powell attend the finals and then fallen because “real of the 100m races at “Ch a mp s ” life” gets in the way. to hand over the medals, they “Ch a mp s ” may be a Jam- make a lasting contribution to aican affair but it’s a great the desire of those athletes to demonstration of the conflu- persist and succeed. ence of elite performance fac- Children are masterful imi- tors. These three factors are tators and so, provided there is always delivered by people — access to those role models the coaches, teachers and (usually TV for widest impact), administrators — who facili- there is scope to develop the tate the discovery of the next next Tendulkar or Nadal. Usain Bolt, rather than stand in Selection is box number two. the way. Where glimmers of It makes no elite-performance sporting success are stillborn, sense for thousands of children as happens so often in our to play a sport if there is no way Olympic sporting codes, look to identify and select them into no further than “Ch a mp s ” fo r teams, where those who are the reasons. Serena wins record title SERENA Williams snapped Steffi Graf and Chris Evert out of her early doldrums to as the only women in the roar to a record seventh Open era to win the same Miami title on Saturday with title seven or more times. a 7-5 6-1 win against China’s Williams already owned Li Na. the most WTA titles in the In a battle of the world’s combined men’s and top two players, the US world wo m e n ’s event, but had No 1 took her tally of WTA shared the overall record of titles to 59 — including 17 six with Andre Agassi. Grand Slam triumphs. “Obviously I wanted the She added a second trophy most titles here,” added in 2014 to the one she lifted Williams, who lives in Miami in Brisbane in January and and first played the event as joined Martina Navratilova, a 16-year-old. — AFP.