Zambia’s bronze medallist in 800 meter men’s category Geoffrey Chama has qualified to compete at the Nanjing Olympics to be held in China next month.
This was after Chama emerged third in today’s 800 meter race finals at the Africa Youth Games taking place in Gaborone, Botswana.
Chama is also among the four Zambian athletes who have qualified to compete at the World Junior athletics championship to be held in the United state of America in July this year.
The Zambian sprinter will be among the 9 African athletes to fill the slots given to Africa for the Nanjing Olympics.
Chama qualified after he emerge third in the 800 meter men’s race today at the 2nd African Youth Games in Gaborone to reap the eighth and last medal for Zambia at the competition.
The Zambia bronze medallist finished with 1:53.09, slightly below his closest opponent Gorata Gabanketse of Botswana who finished second on 1:52.52 while the first position was taken by Kenya’s Anthony Kiptoo with a timing of 1:52.07.
Other Zambia athletes who have qualified for the World Junior athletics championship include Brian Kasinda, Joseph Sinkala and Sydney Siame.
Siame was last Thursday erroneously declared third in the 100 meter men category which was tightly contested but later the judges corrected their mistake and awarded the Zambian athlete a silver medal.
Meanwhile, another Zambian, Brian Kasinda has minted Silver in the 200 meter men’s race after he completed slightly behind Botswana’s Tierelo Baboloki Thebe who reaped silver.
Kasinda who started a little later than his opponents ran past South Africa’s Kyle Appel who emerged third and managed to take home a bronze.
Zambia has ended the Gaborone youth competition with 8 medals, 6 silver and 2 bronze.
In athletics alone Zambia has reaped 3 medals while in Boxing the lads mint 2 medals, 2 in judo and 1 medal in swimming.
And Athletics National Junior Chief coach Sydney Mushipe has praised his athletes for minting three medals and qualifying for both the Nanjing Olympics and USA world Junior athletics championship. Mushipi was happy that all his athletes managed to reach the finals in their respective categories and hope to perform even better at the next competition.
He noted that his athletes will now focus on preparing for the Zone 6 and other forthcoming competitions to ensure that they do the country proud again.
Meanwhile, the delegation leader for Team Zambia at the 2014 African Youth Games Boniface Nalishiwa says the Zambian team has a lot of work to do in order to win medals at the international sporting competition.
Naliwisha stated that Zambian athletes have the skills to emerge champions but are not trained enough and that they are small in stature to compete with huge opponents.
He however praised the athletes for minting medals at the competition but noted that more was required from them to make the country proud.
congratulations zambians.Keep the flag flying high.
They never finish on top, always happy with mediocrity!
Nubian ndefwaya divorce, utima wobe naukosesha sana these days.
Naging Olympics? What are those?
How many youths did we send to these games? Looking at the proximity of Botswana to Zambia this was an opportunity to send as many youths as possible but alas looks like we had less than 10 athletes but with 100 officials. What would be the explanation for failing to send many teams to Gaborone? The sports department should be taken back to the ministry of education. Funding for sport should go to schools because that’s where the youths are. Lets make use of PE teachers who are being trained at high cost but are not teaching the subject in schools because of lack of equipment and other logistics. Ministry of youth and sport has no youths and sports grounds.