16 Jan 2018

Botswana National Olympic Committee (BNOC) chief executive officer, Tuelo Serufho says they have limited time to prepare for the 2018 Commowealth Games.
The Games will be held in Gold Coast, Australia in April.
Addressing a press conference on Monday, Serufho said preparations started last year.
He said the team was on training camp in December.
In February, he said other team  members would go for training in different places while the rest of the team will remain in the country, where they will have a series of training camps and competitions.
Also as part of the preparations, he said they had already taken the provisional team for a medical check up at a High Performance Centre in Pretoria, South Africa.
“The reason, we did that was because we had noted from the past that one of the reasons we may have failed to achieve our set target, was that athletes had not always been in tip top shape in so far as medical or health is concerned,” he said.
As BNOC, he said they wanted to establish a baseline where their athletes stood in medical condition, so that those with injuries would be attended to in order to avoid exacerbating any injury. “Yes, they were at a high performance centre in Pretoria, late last year.
They were tested we got the results and we started a programme to access those who had injuries
And we are happy to report to you that we do not have major injuries in the team,” he said
He explained that BNOC had previously made a commitment, which they would stick to.
When BNOC developed its strategy, which runs up 2020, he said they had made a committment that they would ensure that the team brings home eight medals from the Commonwealth Games.
“Remember, we came up with the target looking at our final target of our strategic plan, which is the number of medals we wish to win at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
We have also set a target for the Olympic Games.
Our thinking is that for a single Olympic medal, you need two Commonwealth medals; hence we doubled the number from four to eight,” he said.
Serufho said the Commonwealth Games would be the first biggest milestone in their quest to prepare a team that would represent the country in Tokyo.
Post Commonwealth Games, he said they would have a series of other competitions under the BNOC jurisdiction and others.ENDS