28 Jul 2021

Having gone to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games with a target of two medals, Team Botswana has seen that dream becoming blurrier since some team members have been eliminated.

Now focus has turned to athletics and runners are under pressure to redeem the camp.

Saturday and Sunday will be days to revive the country’s hope or shatter it completely.

The 800m runner, Nijel Amos would take it to the track early Saturday morning.

Amos will start at 2:50am while Isaac Makwala and Leungo Scotch will compete in the 400 metres at 3:45am on Sunday.

Some pundits are of the view that the world leading time of 1:42.91 that he recorded recently in Monaco Diamond League was an indication that he was a man with a mission and he could crash David Rudisha’s world record of 1:40.91.

In an interview Tuesday, the national team coach Justice Dipeba, said he knew that all eyes were on athletics, adding that pressure was something that they were used to as coaches.

“We have been there before. If you go back to all the competitions, you will remember that athletics is always the last one to compete and pressure is always on our athletes if other codes do not perform well,” he said.

Dipeba said given the turn of events, the two medals that had been projected would have to be attained by athletics.

He said they were planning to do their best to deliver.

“But we are trying to manage the young ones. You know with social media nowadays, they can see what people are expecting from them, it piles a lot of pressure.

All in all I think we are doing well in terms of containing them,” he said.

He said all the athletes were fit and the most important thing was to progress to all rounds of the competition and make it to the finals.

Dipeba said all the athletes were ready to deliver.ENDS