Sport Matters

New colours. . . . Femi Seun Ogunode was born in Ondo state, Nigeria, but now runs for Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula  For the past decade some Asian countries, especially on the Arabian Peninsula, had been beefing up their ranks in athletics with talent from Africa. These countries, more so Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, used the power of the petro-dollar to lure gifted athletics from poor African countries and offered them "a better life" in exchange for these athletes forsaking their nationalities. Kenya and Ethiopia were the biggest targets, given their well-known talent pools in middle distance running. Though the attitude initially was that Africa will not be crippled by the Arabs' poaching, that notion changed in 2003 when Stephen Cherono left for Qatar. Kenya and Africa were shaken because Cherono was among the brightest prospects to come out of this continent at the time. He had already won the 1999 World Youth Champion in the steeplechase and set a world jun

At his best. . . Cornel Fredericks has done enough to be a contender for 2014 Sportsman of the Year in South Africa. There was plenty of good for South African athletics in the international arena this year, even though the overriding picture having been that of a country in recess in this great sport. The good was the emergence of one-lap hurdler Cornel Fredericks being the man to beat in the world in this discipline, having taken the accolades in all major events this year. Apart from the Commonwealth Games gold, Fredericks also grabbed back-to-back titles in the Moroccan city of Marrakech - in the Africa championships in August and in the IAAF Continental Cup last weekend. Even though he was the only South African athlete to secure a gold medal in an individual event at the two-day competition in north Africa, several other countrymen and woman raised the flag high. Sunette Viljoen, simply the first lady of SA track and field, threw another silver-winning  in the javelin,

Brave new world. . . 17-year-old Rivaldo Coetzee is the youngest among several young players new South Africa coach Shakes Mashaba is hoping to rebuild the fortunes of Bafana Bafana  It's a new brave world for the South African national team after a decade or more of underachieving as new coach Shakes Mashaba begins his new tenure on Friday.  Playing in Sudan is not the kind of start any new coach with an untested squad would wish for, especially without the benefit of a preparation match in a form of a friendly international. But that's how the game at this level rolls. Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers  is serious business, more so for countries  who wish to be counted among the best football nations. This is not hard to fathom, if you look at it in these terms: for a country like SA to fail to qualify for the Afcon, then it simply means we have no right to say anything smart about African football. What would qualify us? Before benefiting from hosting the 2013 edition