Tokyo Olympics heartache, ‘massive culture’ drive Siviwe Soyizwapi’s Blitzboks

Cape Town - The Blitzboks have been breaking all sorts of records in recent months, but not too long ago, they were in a dark place.

Last year’s Tokyo Olympics was supposed to be the culmination of a long build-up to the showpiece event for coach Neil Powell and his team, but once they got closer to Japan, it quickly became a nightmare.

The entire squad had to go into Covid-19 quarantine upon arrival in Tokyo as another passenger on their flight had tested positive.

Then Powell himself had to be isolated following the team’s training camp in Kagoshima, hundreds of kilometres away from the Olympic Village, after contracting Covid-19, and he couldn’t be present with the team for virtually the entire tournament.

After negotiating the group stages unbeaten, the Blitzboks lost 19-14 to Argentina in the quarter-finals, and the gold medal dream was over.

“Tokyo was the biggest disappointment in all of our careers – the players that were there. We’ve put it behind us – we’ve faced it, we’ve dealt with it. We’ve had a couple of meetings and sessions where we were brutally honest with each other, and we identified what went wrong,” Springbok Sevens captain Siviwe Soyizwapi told Independent Media recently.

“So, we can comfortably talk about it now, because it’s behind us. It was tough … it wasn’t easy being there. There’s no excuse for the performance that we put out there, but we’re over it.”

Soyizwapi was speaking after one of his sponsors, Under Armour, held a Mental Strength Symposium in Cape Town last week.

The 29-year-old and his teammates have shown true grit to come back from such a difficult time in their careers at the Tokyo Olympics to reach unbelievable heights since.

They have gone on a 34-match unbeaten run in the