Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) has threatened to write a letter to the Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) regarding the announcements made by the latter on behalf of the association. The athletics body feels undermined by BNOC’s actions.

BAA president, Thari Mooketsi gave an example of a press conference that was organised by BNOC on Friday. He said BAA was not invited to attend the media briefing. Mooketsi said the BNOC was wrong to talk about athletics in the absence of the BAA leadership.

“I am not happy about the way BNOC is doing things. The BNOC does not run the BAA. We intend to write a letter complaining about the state of affairs. We are always faced with the same challenge every time when we are about to go for international games such as Commonwealth,” he said.

Mooketsi said they were surprised to learn that the press conference was an emergency.

“What emergency are they talking about because leaking of information had nothing to do with us. Why was the information leaked?” he wondered.

Meanwhile, the BAA held a meeting with Isaac

The meeting came a day after the BNOC had announced that the doping matter against Makwala had been dealt with by anti-doping organisations and he had no case to answer. 

Mooketsi said the BAA meeting with Makwala had nothing to do with anti-doping testing.

“We wanted to talk to him as a senior athlete in the national team ahead of the Commonwealth (Games). When we had a talk with the other team members last week at the BNOC office about issues of doping, he was not present. We had agreed with him that he must come for a meeting after competing at the Athletix Grand Prix race on Thursday,” Mooketsi said.

He added that they motivated Makwala because a lot is at stake for him at the Commonwealth Games and they do not want him to lose focus.