SA eyes biggest Olympic medal haul as new generation steps up

Team South Africa is on track for a bumper Olympics at Los Angeles 2028, at least according to one metric based on the results achieved by the country’s sports stars this year.

The count of contenders ranked in the top-eight of the world for 2026 stands at 15, although Murray Bales-Smith could lift it to 16 at the coastal rowing world championships in China today.

That matches the 15 top-eights from 2014, two years ahead of Rio 2016, where the nation bagged 10 medals to equal its best-ever haul.

Another metric suggests a more modest haul, however.

South Africa had only four top-three finishes this year — Pieter Coetzé (100m backstroke gold), Blitzboks (sevens gold) and two silvers by the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m track outfits.

That’s exactly half of what South Africa achieved in 2014 across swimming, athletics, sevens, triathlon, rowing and canoeing. Five of them converted those rankings into silverware in Brazil.

There are also a clutch of athletes who have shown the promise of X-factor, perhaps none more so than sprinter Bayanda Walaza.

Of those ranked fourth to eighth in 2014, two made the Games podium two years later — Wayde van Niekerk and Sunette Viljoen.

No shortage of potential

There’s no shortage of potential in the fourth-to-eighth group at the moment, starting with Coetzé, who is fifth in the 200m backstroke and sixth in the 50m.

He took silver in both these races at last year’s world championships.

Coetzé is key to Team South Africa’s performance in 2028, with at least two individual medals in his sights and possibly a podium finish in a relay as well.

Sprinter Sinesipho Dambile and veteran breaststroke racer Michael Houlie, both fourth, are fractions of a second away from glory.

The men’s and women’s T20 cricket teams are fifth, 400m runner Zakithi Nene is sixth and Prudence Sekgodiso (800m) and Erin Gallagher (50m butterfly) are eighth.

In total there are 11 medal opportunities ranked fourth to eighth in the world.

Three Rio medallists were not on the podium radar in 2014.

Caster Semenya was struggling amid a ruling that required her to take testosterone-lowering medication, but that regulation was scrapped in 2015.

Long-jumper Luvo Manyonga was battling drug addiction and triathlete Henri Schoeman was still on the way up, emerging in Rio to take bronze and push countryman Richard Murray into fourth.

Paris 2024 medallists

Likewise in 2026, there’s no shortage of candidates outside the top eight who are too talented to be dismissed — and they feature three medallists from Paris 2024.

First up is breaststroke queen Tatjana Smith; the country’s most decorated Olympian, who has come out of retirement to compete in the 100m and 50m.

She won the 2024 gold and Tokyo 2020 silver in the 100m breaststroke, but is competing seriously in the one-lap sprint for the first time. Smith has dropped the 200m breaststroke, in which she also picked up Olympic gold and silver.

In the 50m, she will face a resurgent Lara van Niekerk, who retained her Commonwealth Games breaststroke title in Glasgow.

Van Niekerk and Smith won gold and silver in the 100m at Birmingham 2022 and offer South Africa the possibility of a first-ever double Olympic swimming podium.

Javelin silver medallist from two years ago, Jo-Ané du Plessis, had a shortened season after undergoing back surgery in April, but she is looking to get back to her best.

And mountain-biker Alan Hatherly, the Olympic bronze medallist and world champion in 2024 and 2025, suffered a puncture this year to dent his hopes of a third straight crown.

X-factor

There are also a clutch of athletes who have shown the promise of X-factor, perhaps none more so than sprinter Bayanda Walaza, who twice ran the 100m in 9.89sec this season to finish ninth on the world list.

He was a matric pupil when he was substituted into the 4x100m team that claimed Olympic silver in 2024, and he followed that up with the 100m-200m double at the under-20 world championships later that year and again at the World University Games last year.

Injury prevented him from competing at the 2025 world championships, but if he continues his trajectory of improvement over the next two seasons, he will have a great chance of winning South Africa’s first Olympic 100m medal since Reggie Walker took gold at London 1908.

And there are others with the potential to rise to the occasion.

Kaylene Corbett won the world championship 200m breaststroke bronze last year and paddler Hamish Lovemore is trying to close in on the K1 1,000m front-runners.

US-based swimmer Aimee Canny is in the world’s top 12 in three events; breaststroke sprinter Chris Smith is also on the up; and, if 100m hurdler Marioné Fourie can find an extra gear, she too could be a contender.

Keep an eye, too, on rowers Paige Badenhorst in the single sculls and Courtney Westley and Kat Williams in the women’s pair.

Whatever metric one chooses to use, Team South Africa seems set to at least improve on the six medals from Paris 2024.

An all-time best showing is not beyond the realm of possibility.