Africa Youth Games team leaves for Morocco

FREDERICK KEBADIRETSE
Staff Writer | Friday July 9, 2010 00:00

The Minister of Sports and Culture, Shaw Kgathi, presented the team with national colours during the sending-off ceremony at the Gaborone International Convention Centre (GICC) on Wednesday evening. 

BNOC president, Negroes Kgosietsile, thanked the government for positively responding to their plea for funds to send a team to the games. He said the games were only announced in February this year and they were therefore not in the initial budget, but the minister pushed hard to make it possible for the country to send a team.

Kgosietsile hailed the team as the future of the country's sport saying it forms an integral part of BNOC plan known as 'London 2012 and beyond'. Botswana is targeting at least two gold medals from the 2012 London Olympics and double the number at the 2016 Olympics scheduled for Rio de Janeiro.

'Given the age of the athletes in this team, and the fact that most top athletes in many sports reach their peak in the period between their late teens to the mid to late 20s, it will therefore be expected that members of this team will join some of their high performing countrymen and women for the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to bring the country glory, hence they will be [an] integral part of this plan,' Kgosietsile said. The team is made up of 13 athletes from five sporting codes - athletics, boxing, judo, swimming and tennis. All athletes in the team are less than 17 years.

Kgathi said the games are a noble idea by African countries because in the past, they had to incur huge expenses sending athletes overseas to get exposure ahead of major events.

He said the games would help prepare the athletes for the World Youth Olympic Games in Singapore next month. Kgathi told the Morocco-bound team to stake its claim as the harbinger of high performance in Botswana sport.

'Go and behave yourselves well and fly the country's flag high.  I have a lot of hope that you will make it,' he said. The farewell ceremony was graced by BNOC patron and former president Sir Ketumile Masire and his wife Olebile Masire. The team departs tomorrow. It is expected back home on the July 19.