Thus far, it is only athletes who have booked their places at the world's biggest sporting event. Letsile Tebogo (100m and 200m), Tshepiso Masalela (800m), Kethobogile Hanguira (800m), and the men’s 4x400m relay team have all qualified. The Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) president, Botsang Tshenyego, said Botswana is likely to send one of the smallest teams to the Olympics. He said not only that the team would be small, it is likely to be one code. “There are still more opportunities to qualify in athletics but that cannot be said about other National Sport Associations (NSA). There are a few opportunities left for other codes to qualify,” he said. Tshenyego said the beach volleyball team has one or two qualifying attempts as they travel for a competition in Namibia next month. He said boxing will be in Thailand for another qualifying opportunity. The boxing road to Paris second World qualification tournament will take place in Bangkok, Thailand, from May 25 to June 2. The tournament would see a total of 51 remaining Paris 2024 Olympic quota places (23 for women and 28 for men) up for grabs across 13 Olympic boxing weight categories, with six for women and seven for men.
However, he mentioned that he was not aware of swimming activities. The other code attempting to stamp a ticket to Paris is weightlifting. Tshenyego said the competitions are getting tougher as they have reached the world level. He said if athletes did not qualify at the accredited national level competitions or continental competitions, qualifying gets tighter. “Preparations have been poor, the main factor being lack of funding. Funding affects other needs of preparations. Our structures should be reviewed. We should be talking with confidence about our coaches, talent scouting, and sports science and medicine. We should be having athletes at different stages of development that we are eyeing beyond Los Angeles 2028 Olympics,” he said. Tshenyego said the talent pools are critical to ensure sustainability and longevity. In the past games, Botswana was given universality places for swimming during the Rio 2016 Games and swimming got another slot as well as judo for the Tokyo 2020 Games. Tshenyego said the idea behind universality place (wild card) is to make sure that every country attends the Olympic Games, including those that do not have athletes who qualify through set standards. “Universality place is offered by international federations and they decide which athletes should benefit. It is meant for athletes who are still at the developmental stage and attempting world ranking. It is more about getting everyone to the games, not a qualification system,” he said.
