JOHANNESBURG : Back to the Olympics?

A delegation of the International Olympic Committee arrives Friday in Johannesburg on a fact-finding mission that many South Africans are predicting will lead to the country’s speedy return to world sporting competition, perhaps in time for the 1992 games in Barcelona, Spain.

South African sporting administrators previously won praise from longtime opponent and head of Africa’s National Olympic Committee, Jean Claude Ganga, for establishing multiracial bodies to control sports in the country.

South Africa last competed in the 1960 Olympics and was expelled from the International Olympic Committee a few years later because of its apartheid policies.