Nozipho Jafta confident about Team SA ahead of Paris 2024

With almost 100 days to Paris 2024, Jafta confirmed to SABC Sport that the final list for Team SA will be released in three weeks.

The only remaining team will be the rugby sevens squad, which still needs to partake in the repechage tournament to qualify - resuming on 21 June in Monaco.

"We're almost 100 days to the Olympics, we're going to France, Paris 2024 for both the Olympics and the Paralympics. Some of the teams have already qualified, we are very saddened by the fact that we could not qualify Banyana Banyana we were really looking forward to it,” Jafta said.

“We're now waiting for the rugby 7s men, we'll only know in June if they qualify or not but we're very excited. We've got a very strong team that we're taking to Paris and we'll be announcing that team now in the next two to three weeks. The only thing I can say is the athletes are looking forward to representing their country. Our hashtag for Paris is 'Doing it for my country'."

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Jafta who is now three years into the CEO position at SASCOC led her team to secure a R66 million four-year deal with Bidvest to launch the Operation Excellence Programme (OPEX) in 2023, to support athletes financially - with the main focus being the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA.

"Everyone is in good spirits, everyone is looking forward to an amazing Olympics and Paralympics. We launched our OPEX programme last year, and we've got about 96 athletes that are benefitting from it.

We've got it as three tires, so we've got your elite tire where we really have your elite athletes that we're hoping to get medals from, our view is very long terms we're looking at 2028 in LA. So, we've got tire 2 that are almost very ready to medal then tire 3, which is really your grassroots and the kids that we're preparing for 2028, 2032."