10 Feb 2015

The disciplinary committee, which was dealing with Amantle Montsho’s case, has forwarded recommendations to the IAAF for endorsement.

The committee members included an attorney, medical doctor and sports physiologist.

Briefing the affiliates at the Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) annual general meeting, the outgoing secretary general, Patrick Moesi said they were expecting a response in the next two weeks.

He said BAA was prejudiced in the case as they could not support the athlete since they strived for a drug free sport as demanded of them by the IAAF and World Anti-Doping Agency.

Montsho tested positive for a banned substance methylhexaneamine during the Commonwealth Games held in Glasgow, and according to Moesi, the case was referred to as International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and the IAAF referred it to BAA for determination and disciplinary action.

He said they had followed the IAAF rules regarding notification to the athletes and she had been provisionally suspended from all competitions.

This case, he said, had brought about issues that needed to be addressed quickly that they cleaned their sport from drug use. He said clubs and coaches should educate their athletes on drugs so they avoided a repeat of what happened.

“This should be a lesson for us and we should emerge from this stronger and with valuable lessons, but we will continue to collaborate with the BNOC through the interim NADO for educational campaigns to be run alongside our events so that athletes are aware of the issue” he said.

On other issues, Moesi said the success of BAA relies on team work from all the stakeholders involved in athletics, adding in the past year as BAA they faced challenges in their relationship with their officers.

According to Moesi, the BAA executive is the authority of athletics, and therefore it was important that their officers should work under the elected office bearers.

“The is a lot of insubordination and political interference by staff who clearly shouldn’t be meddling on the politics of athletics, active participation in the politics by officers rendered them impartial in their conduct of day to day office operations” he said.

Moesi who did not stand for elections, cautioned those who were elected to take stern action against all officers who will meddle in athletics politics, adding the officers mandate is clear, therefore they should desist from disturbing the smooth running of athletics in Botswana.

However, Moesi said despite the fact that the general day to day running of BAA office has improved over the years, it should be noted as well that there was a need for the association to improve its communication with affiliates.

“We live in the era of information technology and as such we need to embrace available technologies to improve communication between affiliates and association,” he said.

According to him, another area that needs to be improved is the turn-around times in terms of responding to all communication from stake holders such as International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) Confederation of African Athletics (CAA), Botswana National Sports Council, and Botswana National Olympic Committee.

He said although there have been improvement in terms of meeting deadlines, there still remains an opportunity for more growth.ENDS