Athletics South Africa held a successful Family Meeting at the weekend with elite athletes and their coaches to outline the 2022 athletics season.

In arguably the best attendance by athletes in 10 years, the meeting - held at the Garden Court OR Tambo hotel in Johannesburg - was also one of the most robust ever in terms of engagement.

The stakeholders had a lot of questions and suggestions especially on the areas around the selection criteria and placement of some fixtures. There were also suggestions on how to improve communications within the family affecting athletes, coaches, and ASA Athletes Commission.

 There was also a presentation from SAIDS (South African Institute for Drug-Free Sport) which focussed on updating all stakeholders on how to perform within the perimeters of fair play, health, and well-being of athletes.

Around the fixtures was a topic on preparations and qualification mainly to the CAA African Championships in Mauritius (8-12 June), the Final Preparation for the World Athletics Championships to be held in Oregon, USA (15-24 July), the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham (2-8 Aug) and the World Athletics U20 Championships in Cali, Colombia (1-6 Aug).

“It was so welcome to have a vocal engagement from both athletes and coaches,” said James Moloi, the President of ASA. “This is what we wanted because it assured us of our strengths and exposed our weaknesses. There were very fruitful contributions and some of the emotions were proof of the love and dedication towards athletics in general.

 “Even though we are a new administration, it was also clear that we will need to do things differently to move forward in unison. We have taken note of the suggestion to have a second session to address other matters that came up or outstanding.”