After 11 days of competition, Team South Africa flew out of the UK with seven gold medals after the Commonwealth Games came to an end in Birmingham on Monday.
Another nine silvers and 11 bronze medals were part of the team’s haul but that was only enough for a ninth-place finish on the overall medal table – behind the likes of Scotland and Wales as well as continental rivals Nigeria (who were seventh).
That’s the worst return by a South African team at the Games since 1994 when a hastily assembled squad was sent to the event in Canada after the country’s reintroduction to the Commonwealth just a matter of weeks earlier and returned with two golds and 12th place overall.
Had it not been for two teenage swimmers’ stunning performances in Birmingham, things could have looked much bleaker with Lara van Niekerk and Pieter Coetzé collecting three golds, a silver and a bronze between them.
The swimmers were by far the most prolific, with Olympic champion Tatjana Schoenmaker also among the gold medallists while there were another four silvers and three bronzes won in the pool.
Athletics, a code that usually contributes a large chunk of the gongs, was always going to struggle to deliver with the World Championships scheduled for just a few weeks earlier, and several athletes tested positive for Covid and had to withdraw from the Games.
In their absence, visually impaired sprinter Jonathan Ntutu was the only gold medallist on the track with Akani Simbine and Charl du Toit adding 100m silver and 400m hurdler Zeney van der Walt and long jumper Jovan van Vuuren bronze.
Other sporting codes to contribute were of course rugby sevens, judo (Michaela Whitebooi providing one of the highlights of the Games for Team SA with her gold in the women’s 48kg), cycling, lawn bowls, boxing, gymnastics and wrestling, while the SA men’s hockey team just missed out on a memorable bronze after earning their place in a semifinal for the first time in two decades.
Worth mentioning is the fact that more golds were won by women, with female athletes also edging ahead in the total medal count with 14 out of 27.
The medal-winning performances were all the more impressive considering the athletes have achieved these feats with very little to nothing in the way of funding and support.