South African Paralympians hope for gold without Pistorius

On a sunny morning at the end of August, Jonathan Ntutu warms up on the tartan track of the Tygerberg Athletic Club in Cape Town. It's just a light warm-up, as Ntutu has to save his energy and doesn't want to risk injury before the Paralymics in Brazil.

Ntutu is one of 44 South African athletes competing in 10 disciplines in Rio de Janeiro. The 32-year-old is visually impaired. His speciality are the 100 and 200 meter sprints. In London 2012, he won the bronze medal for the 100 meter race. This time, he's going for gold.

His visual impairement does not play a role for him: "I don't see myself as a disabled athlete. There are a lot of times when I have to run with able bodied athletes in local competitions and I compete with them the best I can."
Ntutu was born in Gugulethu Township in Cape Town. His family had little money, but that did not hinder his journey to becoming a professional athlete. His parents sent him to a boarding school for visually impaired children. He started running at the age of six and soon participated in the first school competitions.

Hurdles on the way to professional sports

Many of the young athletes with disabilities from the townships or the rural areas, however, face more difficulties than Ntutu. Ernesta Strydom from the Free State Sport Association for the Physically Disabled or Visually Impaired (FSSAPD) knows this: "There are a lot of stumbling blocks, like transport, like money. Sometimes we have to give them supplements, because there is no food at home."

Strydom is also South Africa's technical official for the International Paralympics Committee (IPC). She is aware of the kinds of problems disabled sports face in South Africa. Promoting talent and training works as long as the athletes are still in school, Strydom told DW. After school, disabled sports lack money and infrastructure, especially at the community level. Strydom often advises her athletes to train in the conventional sports clubs, but many instructors are not trained in working with people with disabilities.

Moekki Grobberlaar, a former Paralympics athlete in power lifting and president of the South African Sport Association for Physically Disabled & Visually Impaired (SASAPD), on the other hand thinks that the general disabled sports in South Africa is there. But she also sees its deficits: "I don't think that South Africa at this moment in time is on the platform where I could say that all facilities are easily accessible to people with a disability to go and practice these sports."

Volunteers fill important gaps

Volunteers like Strydom are especially important on a provincial and regional level. In her day-job, Strydom works as a physiotherapist. "It is difficult, but looking at the whole situation, we are not doing that bad, if you keep in mind that we are only volunteers driving this process," she explained.

On an African level, South Africa tops the Paralympics table. The athletes from the Cape have won 280 medals to date. That's not much in comparison to Paralympics champion USA with ist 2,300 medals, but a lot more than Kenya with its 43 medals. Other African countries like Botswana have not won a single medal. Between 1980 and 1992, Apartheid South Africa, was not welcome at the Paralympics and in the later years of this period, it was banned form participating altogether.

A new generation of Paralympics stars

In the past few year, Oscar Pistorius, or the "Blade Runner" as he was known, was South Africa's Paralympics darling – until he was charged with manslaughter for the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius' fall, however, did not damage the image of the disabled sports in South Africa as a whole, Strydom and Grobberlaar explained.

There are other Paralympics stars, pointed out SASPD president Grobbelaar. Swimmer Natalie du Toit, for instance, or track and field athlete Ilse Hayes Carstens. Ntutu sees Pistorius' role as a Paralympics champion similarly: "He was probably an idol to everybody. He helped put South Africa on the map for Paralympics sport, but that hasn't cast any dark shadow on us, because we are going on our own as a team and we are being looked at as individuals on a team."

For athletes like Ntutu, making it to the Paralympics is often a long and hard journey – especially financially. Finding the right sponsors is difficult for both disabled and non-disabled athletes.

Ntutu hopes that the success of South Africa's Olympics team will rub off on the Paralympics team: "Athletics in South Africa in general aren't that big, but now with Wayde van Niekerk and Caster Semenya, South African corporate companies are starting to see the athletes now, so hopefully Paralympic sport will benefit from that as well." And one positive development has already taken place. The South African Olympics Committee has announced that Paralympics medal winners will get the same bonuses as their Olympic colleagues.