17 July 2024 – South African Football Association (SAFA) Chief Medical Officer Dr Thulani Ngwenya is heading to Paris today to represent the country at the 2024 Olympic Games.
Dr Ngwenya will be part of Team South Africa and the medical team that will be taking care of the South African athletes during the Games. He will return to South Africa on 13 August 2024.
“This will be my first Olympic Games and I am very excited. I am so looking forward to the experience,” he said.
Dr Ngwenya has become one of the most respected experts within the sports medicine field and served in other sporting codes outside of football.
He has served his country in two Commonwealth Games, in Australia in 2018 and in Birmingham 2022, where he was the Chief Medical Officer for Team SA. He missed the Tokyo Olympic Games due to personal reasons.
He is a huge presence in football and his work as the SAFA Chief Medical Officer has been recognized by FIFA and CAF on numerous occasions. He was appointed as the Doping Control Officer for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022. He was also appointed by FIFA as a Doping Control Officer for the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Argentina in 2023. He also served in the same position during the Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon in 2022, and at this year’s continental tournament in Côte d’Ivoire where Bafana Bafana won the Broze medal. He is also a CAF Medical Commission Member.
