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Sportshour

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Live Saturday morning global sports show with reports, debate and humour

Live Saturday morning global sports show with reports, debate and humour.

Sportshour: Senzo Meyiwa: Searching South Africa's Soul

Senzo Meyiwa: Searching South Africa's Soul

01/11/2014

BBC World Service - Sportshour, Senzo Meyiwa: Searching South Africa's Soul

We look at South African soul searching having lost one of its leading sports role models

Gun crime is regularly in the news in South Africa but when the captain of the nation's football team was shot dead at his girlfriend's home last Sunday, it left many people deeply shocked. We hear from the moving memorial service for Senzo Meyiwa and look at the soul searching South Africa is doing having lost one of its leading sporting role models.  

State of the Union
The vast capacity of Soldier Field in Chicago is normally full to the brim with fans cheering on their favourite sport, played with an oval shaped ball. On Saturday the game will have one slight but significant difference and it’s not the ball. The home of American football team the Chicago Bears will be taken over by the America rugby team as they host New Zealand. The pull of the “All Blacks” has meant this will far exceed the largest crowd ever to watch a rugby game in the United States.

Karate Kidding
Whilst taekwondo and judo have a place at the Olympics, karate has been unable to make that breakthrough. However things could be about to change as it has been included in the inaugural European Olympics in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2015. It means that the World Championships which start in in Bremen in Germany on Wednesday offer an added incentive. The BBC's Chris Slegg has been to meet two contenders who might now be able to eye up Olympic gold.

Blind Darts
We are at the oche with the darts team with a difference. The squad at the Dolphin Inn in Cornwall is made up of blind players.

Mark Pollock
A couple of weeks ago we heard about the world's first bionic Olympics. Cybathalon will be held in Switzerland in 2016 and Mark Pollock is hoping to take part. Mark who is blind has a rich sporting background, having won two medals at the 2002 Commonwealth rowing championships, competing against sighted athletes. Then in 2010 he suffered an accident which left him paralysed from the waist down. 
We hear about Mark’s drive as he pushes  himself and others to search for a breakthrough in treating paralysis.

Kenya Boxing
As part of the BBC's 100 Women season we hear about the Kenyan schoolgirls fighting back against sexual violence - by learning how to box. Emily Kasyoka is 14-years-old and has been telling the BBC of the challenges and threats facing young women in the capital Nairobi and how self-defence classes could help her and 200 others.

Sporting Witness… In the late 1970s, three footballers - Cyrille Regis, Laurie Cunningham and Brendon Batson - became the first famous black players in English football. Leading the line for a stylish West Bromwich Albion side, they overcame racist taunts on the pitch and inspired a generation. The three players were nicknamed The Three Degrees, after a trio of American pop singers.

Photo: South Africans gather at the Standard Bank Arena to pay their final respects to South African National Football Team Captain and Orlando Pirates goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa, Olympic 800m runner Mbulaeni Mulaudzi and boxer Phindile Mwelase in Johannesburg, South Africa on October 30, 2014. (CREDIT: Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

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