Heartbreak for Botswana at Youth Olympics

FREDERICK KEBADIRETSE
Staff Writer | Thursday August 26, 2010 00:00

 

The games end today but by yesterday, the team had not won a medal and all five athletes had been knocked out. High jumper, Mmilili Dube was the first Motswana to bite the dust despite making it to the top 15.

The Africa Youth Games gold medalist was the continent's only remaining hope but failed to make it to the top eight and reach the final. He only cleared 2.04m and failed to surpass his personal best of 2.07m.

Stage fright might have worked against the 17-year-old as he has reportedly cleared 2.08m during training. Dube settled for position 11 and failed to make it to the final. He was therefore relegated to compete in the B category with other athletes who did not make it to the finals.

The swimming duo of Daniel Lee John and Adrian Jeffrey Todd also failed to make it to the next stage in the 50m freestyle and butterfly events despite clocking personal best times of 26.89 seconds and 25.08 seconds respectively in the freestyle.

John finished 38th out of 52 swimmers in his freestyle heat while the UK-based Todd was 27th out of 52 in his heat. Winnie George was disqualified in the first heat in the 1,000m but was given another chance to compete in the B category finals.

The last hope for Botswana, Neo Kapeko of judo competed on Sunday and managed and won her first bout against Tchanilley Djamila of Togo in the 63kg category.

She however faltered against Brazilian Goves Flavia in the next bout as Flavia went on to grab silver in the category. Kapeko fought in category B where an opponent from Cameroon defeated her. She was scheduled to compete in a mixed team competition late yesterday.

Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) acting chief executive officer, Andrew Kamanga said that despite failure to win medals, they are proud of the team. He said the youngsters performed well judging by the fact that they were not exposed to thorough and rigorous training unlike their opponents.

'For them to pass through the first stage is something. Their counterparts are young professionals, most of them are coming from sports development academies while they (Batswana) have more school commitments than sport,' Kamanga said.

He added that the athletes need continuous nurturing upon their return as they are the future of the country's sport.

Performance at the games was supposed to indicate participating nations preparedness for the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games as most of the young athletes will be ripe by then. The Botswana team is expected back home on Saturday.