02 Nov 2016

Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) is concerned about the mushrooming of marathons across the country with a lot of them not following the rules of the craft.

 BAA president Moses Bantsi said recently that in such unauthorised marathons, members of the public were losing their hard earned cash under the auspices of charity.

“To make matters worse some of our affiliates take part in these races as athletes or officials and prizes for winners are never paid, or if paid, they are disproportional to the entire amount raised. Let’s educate our brothers and sisters out there to be watchful,” Bantsi said.
He explained that BAA could not watch helplessly when suddenly athletics gets turned into a fund raising activity benefitting indivduals.  

He cited a marathon in Francistown, where a 13-year-old was declared a winner , saying that was unacceptable as it was against the good practice of the IAAF for a minor to run that kind of a race.

“We are not against such marathons, rather, what we are saying is that all the procedures should be followed by contacting BAA affiliates first,” he said.

On other issues, he said IAAF was undergoing transformation and that his federation stood to benefit a lot from the changes.

“Several initiatives have been introduced to assist upcoming federations like ours and we must be ready to take these up. I am pleased to announce that we have applied for athletics Olympic dividend of P250 000 as part of this transformation,” he said.

Bantsi also said they had proposed to train 100 coaches and officials, as well as fence their plot with the initial money due by January 2017.

He said every year for four years they were supposed to apply and account for the money given.

On anti-doping, he said the doping problem, which had seen elite countries like Russia being suspended from the past Olympic Games, was being dealt with accordingly.

 He said the IAAF was going through governance reforms, which would affect all its affiliates including BAA.

 “Although Africa through Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) agrees with the reforms, it must be noted with regret that the same were done at its exclusion as we were invited at a very late stage when they were almost at implementation stage,” he said.
The CAA, he said, then called for the process to be restarted for meaningful presentation.

“Otherwise, if Africa missed it would never have a good representation at all IAAF structures for years to come,” he said.ENDS