Athletics team scoops 12 medals

MOSAH MOKGANEDI
Correspondent | Tuesday May 20, 2008 00:00

The haul includes two gold, seven silver and three bronze medals.

Additionally one gold medallist, 400m runner Thapelo Ketlogetswe, qualified for the World Junior Championships slated for Poland in July.

He joins Pako Seribe and Shaka Ntsimako who have already qualified. In the Pretoria events, Botswana became second after South Africa. Other countries that took part in the competition were Namibia, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, and Malawi.

Coach Malebogo Mogano expressed satisfaction at the way the team performed. She said most of the athletes were taking part at an international level for the first time and were impressive.

Mogano added that they also learnt much from the competition and were able to gauge their fitness levels.

Team manager Rampa Mosweu was also impressed by the team's display.

He said they now face a challenge of monitoring and developing the young athletes.

Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) senior development officer Bobby Gaseitsiwe said sending a large contigent to the competition is part of their youth development initiative.

Gaseitsiwe was also happy that they managed to send a reasonable number of girls. Just like most sport codes, athletics faces a challenge of low women participation.

He said BAA takes youth development seriously and that they will strive to achieve more.
He also added that women participation is an issue that has always been close to their hearts but added that women will just like their male counterparts be selected on merit not gender.

The competition is held after every two years and Botswana finished in the same position in the last edition.

Gaseitsiwe said they will continue to give athletes platform to qualify for the world event.
The next qualifying event will be the FNB youth championships to be held in Gaborone.

Meanwhile, the Debswana Senior Championships that had been scheduled for this weekend have been postponed to June 15. Gaseitsiwe said the postponement is necessary because they have not finalised some of the issues with the sponsors.