No universality places for Tanzania in Olympic Games
Tanzania's top female swimmer Ria Save competes in a past event. The Dar Swim Club swimmer also represented the country in the World Championship held last year in Australia. PHOTO | COURTESY
What you need to know:
- The qualification window for marathoners was open since November last year and will expire on April 30 next year.
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Olympic Committee (TOC) has urged sportsmen and women in the country to start searching for qualifying marks ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Paris, France.
TOC also has insisted that there will be no universalities places for Tanzania’s sportsmen and women ahead of the multisport event scheduled to start from August 2 to 11, 2024.
Speaking with The Citizen yesterday, TOC secretary general Filbert Bayi said there is still room for Tanzania’s sportsmen and women to search for the qualifying marks, insisting that there will be no universality places.
According to Bayi, already the organisers of the event have released a qualification period schedule and qualification marks required to be attained by sportsmen and women in various sports.
He said the qualification window for marathoners was open since November last year and will expire on April 30 next year. He noted that marathoners have to record at least 2:11:30 (men) and 2:29:30 (women). For other events, the qualification period runs from July 1, this year, to June 30, next year. Already Nassau in the Bahamas will host the World Athletics Relays, the main Olympic qualifying event for the relays in April/May 2024 (dates to be confirmed). “I call upon all sportsmen and women to struggle for attaining qualification marks. There is no room for universalities that are normally for losers. We have done so for many years and no medals were obtained by them,” said Bayi.
He said TOC will include any sportsmen and women who will attain the qualification marks set by the Olympic Games organisers. “This is to say that we do not have barriers for any sportsmen and women to feature in an event despite TOC having a special training program that involves athletics, judo and amateur boxing,” he said. Bayi explained that judokas and amateur boxers have been given another chance of testing their skills before being included in their special Olympic qualification program. Already three runners namely Ally Gulam, Benedicto Mathias and Winfrida Makenji have attained the standards set by TOC and will soon undergo special training ahead of the Olympic Games qualification standards. Gulam has qualified for preliminary stages after recording 21.07 seconds and 10.40 seconds in the 200m and 100m races while Benedicto recorded 21.74 seconds in the 200m race and Makenji used 23.80 seconds and 11.80 seconds in both 200m and 100m races. According to Bayi, amateur boxers and judokas, who did well in special competitions will have to compete internationally and those who will do the best will enter training camp ahead of the 2024 Olympics.
“We will look at the proper procedure for those who did well nationally to prepare for international competitions, those who will do well will directly join special preparation camp,” he said.
Among those who won gold medals in national boxing competitions held recently are Yusuph Changalawe (light heavy), Ibrahim Maulid (light), Joseph Pilipo (light middle) and Rashid Mrema in the featherweight.
The training program also involves famous runners namely Alphonce Simbu, Failuna Abdi and Gabriel Geay together with swimmer Hilal Hilal and judoka Andrew Thomas.
