Habana‚ who was the player of the tournament and world player of the year in 2007 when the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup‚ was hoping to be part of rugby’s historic return to the Olympics in Rio next month.
But he‚ along with other 15s Springboks Ryan Kankowski and Francois Hougaard‚ did not make the lucky dozen.
Also in the cold were South African soccer stars Andile Jali and Lebogang Phiri after the two players were denied permission to travel to the global showpiece by their European clubs.
Jali was to be one of the overage players in SA U23 coach Owen da Gama’s squad‚ but his Belgian club, KV Oostende, turned down the midfielder’s call-up.
Denmark-based Phiri suffered a similar fate when his club, Brondby, also turned down the request.
An enlarged South Africa team will represent the country at the Olympics in Brazil next month, the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) announced yesterday.
An additional 113 athletes were named to an initial 24 names that were given out in May to bring the total number of participants for the Games to 137.
That is 12 more than the 125 athletes who represented South Africa at the 2012 Olympics in London.
In addition to track and field athletes and swimmers‚ SA will be represented in other codes like sevens rugby‚ men and women’s soccer‚ golf‚ badminton‚ judo‚ triathlon‚ rowing and equestrian.
The Eastern Cape will be represented by six competitors in marathon runner Lusapho April, swimmer Chris Reid, sprinter Anaso Jobodwana, new Chippa United midfielder Menzi Masuku and sevens stars Cecil Afrika and Tim Agaba, who is formerly of the Kings.
A juicy financial carrot has been dangled in front of the competitors.
