Over 200 cyclists participate in Orapa cycling challenge

Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Tuesday May 13, 2025 21:27

Orapa Cycling Club (OCC) held its annual cycling challenge, which is one of the build-up events to the Orapa General Manager's (GM) walk, which will be held in August this year. In an interview with SportMonitor, the OCC chairperson, Sarah Moatshe said the event had over 200 participants including cyclists and walkers on Sunday. Despite an enormous number of participants, she said less women participated in the bike challenge. She indicated that there were 160 males and 40 females who participated in the challenge. Moatshe stated that they were happy about the attendants despite the challenges they experienced leading to two years without hosting the same event. According to Moatshe, there were over 50 juniors and youth who were part of the challenge. She also highlighted that they had over 30 sponsors including those who sponsored in Cash and in kind.

Meanwhile, Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa Mine (OLDM) general manager, Mogakolodi Maoketsa, said the last time they met was three years ago, as they tried in 2023 and 2024, but they were not successful. He stated that the Cycle2School programme aims to enhance students’ academic performance by addressing challenges arising from lengthy daily commutes as some students walk long distances on a daily basis to and from school. Maoketsa further indicated that some of the proceeds of the cycling event will procure bicycles for the underprivileged students who walk long distances, thus empowering the young children to overcome transportation challenges and consequently improve students’ academic performance. He said this will help the students to arrive in school on time and to be at par with those who are staying next to the school. He stated that the programme aligns well with Debswana’s purpose of making life brilliant. Debswana is on a mission to support the education space and improve academic performance in primary and secondary schools, he added. “As part of efforts to improve academic performance, Debswana has set itself a target to ensure that we support the schools in our areas of influence to be amongst the top 20% performing schools nationally by the year 2030,” said Maoketsa

Therefore, he stated that it is pleasing to see Debswana clubs such as Orapa Cycling Club investing into projects that promote and improve academic performance. He said education is a key in making sure that they are successful as a country. He stated creating enabling environment for the children to excel academically is key for this success. Maoketsa said promoting youth participation and introducing young people to utilising the bicycles is not only an issue about supporting academic performance but developing sport. He said over the past years, they registered a decline in terms of aged group participation as they are seeing young people joining the sport. “We want to see those people that we are sponsoring also joining clubs so that they can start learning the robes so that they can keep the sporting code alive through the influence of old-timers,” he added. Maoketsa thanked all that made the challenges possible starting with the cycling club. “Two years of absence and we are back again it is because they worked really hard to make it possible,” he concluded.