01 Jun 2020

Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) vice president, Oabona Theetso says they are working on training modalities to ensure that they comply with COVID-19 protocols.

Theetso noted that BAA has many athletes under its wing, and as such, he said they were working round the clock to ensure that they comply with COVID-19 safety protocols, which stipulates that there should not be many people in one place at the same time, among others.

“Athletics is not a contact sport, but how we will handle our training and competition matters.

We do not want a situation where we will put our athletes at risk,” he said.

For now, he said they would identify all coaches who normally use both the National Stadium and University of Botswana stadium to engage them on their modalities of conducting trainings.

“We want them to tell us how they were going to manage the numbers, and how are they going to train, and after that as BAA, we will then make a decision, whether it is safe for athletes to train or if they should do some improvement on certain areas,” he said.

Theetso said BAA would strive to comply with all COVID-19 protocols.

Furthermore, he said it was coaches’ responsibility to keep a register to help in cases of contact tracing and taking temperatures of all athletes during training.

Meanwhile, a press release from Botswana National Sport Commission (BNSC) indicates that as government continues to ease restrictions, sport is expected to also gradually return to training and competitions.

The release states that sporting codes will be allowed to return to training, as long as they comply with set regulations and are cleared by BNSC.

It further says all sport competitions may resume with effect from June 1 except for netball, football and rugby. ENDS