15 Mar 2023

Four athletes are in a training camp in California, US to prepare for the World Athletics Championship competition to be held in Budapest, Hungary in August.

The quartet of Letsile Tebogo, Leungo Scotch, Bayapo Ndori and Zibane Ngozi together with their coach, Dose Mosimanyane., are under the Nike sponsorship.

Mosimanyane said in an interview that they were happy that they were in a training camp to prepare for the competition.

The training camp, he said would give Ngozi and Scotch an opportunity to seek qualification for individual 400m race and to make it into the men’s 4x400m relay team, which had already qualified.

“Only Tebogo and Ndori have already hit the qualifying mark, so they are here to prepare, while the other two, would be seeking a qualification,” he said.

Mosimanyane said their aim was to do better than they did in Oregon in their respective individual races.

He said they also wanted to help the relay team to do better and help the country to improve overall performance to a better position than in Oregon.

“Tebogo went only up to the semi-finals in Oregon, it would be nice if he could at least reach the final in Budapest.

Ndori went to the final and got position six in Oregon and it would be nice for him to do better in Budapest.

I would also like to see Botswana have more than one finalists in the individual 400m,” he said.

Botswana Athletics Association, vice president Oabona Theetso said the training camp would help athletes qualify for the World Championship and Olympics.

“As much as we want them to qualify for Budapest, their ultimate goal is to also qualify for the Olympics and we want to increase our number of medals at the Olympics” he said.

He said currently, both Tebogo and Ndori were ranked high, and training at the first world facilities would expose them to a lot of things.

Theetso said also training outside the country meant that they would be more focused with no destruction unlike training at home.

“Whilst there, they don’t have time to check their friends, its training and rest and we believe that it is a positive development for our athletes,” he said.

Furthermore, Theetso said their aim was to have another individual medal from the Olympics, given that the last time Botswana won was in 2012 in London, through Nijel Amos, who won a silver medal.

Botswana 4x400m men’s relay team also won a bronze medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, and Theetso said they would  do everything in their power to ensure that the team gets a podium finish at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Ends