17 Jan 2020

-  Last season Botswana athletes failed to impress on the international stage owing to injuries and lack of fitness.

However, the new season would be a busy one for Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) looking at its calendar of events.

The association is eyeing major competitions such as world athletics indoor championships, billed for China, world half marathon in Poland, African championship in Algeria, World Under 20 in Kenya and Olympic Games scheduled for Japan.

Experience has been a good teacher for BAA, because after the  men’s 4x400 relay team missed the  IAAF World Relays due to an administrative lapse last year, the association was poised to put its best foot forward.

BAA vice president, Oabona Theetso, said in an interview that their mission was not to miss any major event this season.

“Funds permitting and if our athletes have qualified for the events, we should let them go and compete. Remember we want to market our country and our athletes, but we can only do that through participation and making it to the podium,” he said.

Theetso said after a bad spell at the World Championships last season, they had to pick up the pieces and map a way forward.

“Currently we have a number of athletes in camp. Our intension is to keep them busy throughout the year. Last year we did not have a camp and it did not work for us since we did not have enough time to access the athletes before the competition,” he said.

He said this year, they would want to send injury free athletes to the competition, adding that they could only do that when the athletes were in camp.

“What I can promise Batswana is that after what happened last season, where we failed to take the relay to Yokohama and also failed to impress at the World Championships, the time is now to resuscitate BAA,” he said. ENDS