19 Feb 2019

Compromiso Esfuerzo y Trabajo (CET) coach, Llorenc Solbes Ponsoda will buy three Batswana athletes flight tickets to join his table in Spain.

This comes after Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) anounced that due to financial constraints, they were unable to send the three athletes, Ditiro Nzamani, Lee Eppie who both run 400 metres and 800 metres runner, Tshepiso Masalela.

In an interview, Ponsoda said they would pay for flight tickets, accommodation, meals and travels to competitions between January to August. He said BAA was not going to pay any costs for the athletes during their stay in Spain.

He said the three athletes were talented and still young, and that it was crucial to make them competitive as well as work on a long term programme to develop the areas that each athlete needed to  succeed in future.

 The athletes, he said, had the potential to leave a mark at the coming World Championships to be held in Doha.

He said the benefit of training in Spain was that the country was good in outdoor sports, and that the weather was favourable with good training facilities, medical services and the Mediterranean diet, which was good for athletes.Furthermore, he said there was no doubt that CET had a balanced programme, and also understand what was important for athletes.

He said this season their focus was on young and upcoming athletes, and that they have the Region 5 Youth Games 400 metres champion, Zambian Kennedy Luchembe and Burundian Eric Nzikwinkunda.

“The main group of young talents come from Botswana, and that is where our focus is currently, developing young talent is our main mission as CET,” he said.

Ponsoda said in the past they had athletes like Qatari Abdalelah Haroun, Burundian Antoine Gakeme and Francine Niyonsaba as well as Onkabetse Nkobolo, who qualified for the last World Championships whilst training in Spain.

“Other athletes from Botswana who once trained with us are Lydia Jele for one year, and we had Nijel Amos in 2015 and Pako Seribe in 2013 for a short period,” he said

He said should the athletes train with them, Botswana would reap the benefits given that CET focused on creating individual programmes.

“In our opinion, Nkobolo was a 400-800m profile athlete with an amazing talent.

We put him with two other athletes of the same profile. He was able to run his personal best,” he said.He said they also made sure that athletes stayed away from the pressure of bringing quick results, but rather focused on the process, given that athletes must reach some goals during the season like injury prevention and strength levels.

Orapa Athletics Club chairperson, Kenneth Kikwe said they were awaiting the green light from BAA.

Kikwe said they were happy that CET would sponsor their athletes with flight tickets, given that it was the only stumbling block.

“This arrangement will benefit us given that the athletes will have access to medical doctors, physiotherapists, dieticians and good training facilities,” he said. ENDs