Namibia performed well: Katukula

Namibia performed well: Katukula Team Namibia’s sixth place at the recent Youth Games in Angola is fair considering the circumstances under which athletes prepared for the event, team leader Victoria Katukula has said.

“This year, we had budget cuts and we did not have enough funds to prepare the teams the way we wanted to,” Katukula told Nampa on Thursday.

This was due to blanket budget cuts by the government recently.

Namibia collected 40 medals (five gold medals, 19 silver and 16 bronze) at the 2016 African Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region Five Under-20 (U20) Youth Games held in Luanda, Angola from 9 to 18 December.

The team of 125 able-bodied athletes and some with disabilities competed in women’s football, track and field, boxing, basketball, netball, swimming, and tennis against nine other southern African countries.

The chef de mission said Namibia has a lot of talent that needs to be mentored.

“I hope we will have people monitoring the progress of these young athletes after these games as we don’t want them to just disappear in the system without showing their full potential at senior level.”

South Africa were the overall winners with 125 medals of which 63 were gold, followed by Botswana with 35 medals (14 gold); Zimbabwe third with 76 medals (12 gold); and Angola fourth with 33 medals (12 gold).

Lesotho finished off the top five with 16 medals (six gold).

Mozambique ended seventh with 22 medals (four gold); Zambia eighth with 15 medals (four gold); Malawi ninth with nine medals (no gold) and Swaziland 10th with one bronze medal.

NAMPA