30 Nov 2016

The constituency sports competitions will soon undergo an expansion with the introduction of athletics.

Introduced eight years ago with football and later volleyball and netball, the state- run competition is set to add athletics to its set of activities.

Athletics has proved that it has potential to bring success to Botswana.

In an interview this week, Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development Thapelo Olopeng stated that codes that have raised the country flag high internationally must be supported.

Olopeng said more emphasis should be put on athletics, adding that the idea is to invest in athletes’ talent.

The minister said he would tour centres of excellence for sport to make sure that everyone was on board to kick start the massive project of talent identification.

“I think what we need to do as a nation, we have to evaluate and say to ourselves where do we come from and where do we want to go. We have a population of only two million and when we look into international arena, athletics is doing so well,” Olopeng said.

Olopeng said after returning from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games he met relevant officials and told them to do more talent search in athletics, and they realised that they way to go was to introduce athletics as constituency sport competition.

“Athletics is a very cheap code to run, you don’t need a lot of equipment.

All what you need is a pair of shoes and a tracksuit or shorts and go into the track. This is the time, we have to start re-focussing and define our mandate as far as international competition is concerned,” he said.

Olopeng added: “simple analysis- if we have those young boys, your Baboloki Thebe, and Karabo Sibanda, and Galefele Moroko. What makes you think they are the only ones?

Obviously there are more who are somewhere hidden because we haven’t done much of talent search.”

Olopeng added that he has instructed Botswana National Sport Commission to make sure that Botswana Athletics Association had a fully functional secretariat headed by a chief executive officer to ensure that athletics is managed properly. ENDS