Sports

Mukangara wants Olympic participation assessment

Minister Fenella Mukangara

THE Ministry of Information, Youth, Culture and Sports has ordered all sports associations that had sent athletes to the just concluded 2012 London Olympics, to submit to the government a detailed assessment  of their participation into the Games. 

Director of Sports in the Ministry, Leonard Thadeo, said Minister Fenella Mukangara had demanded to get a detailed assessment from all sports associations that participated into the quadrennial games, which shall include preparations made in the past four years prior to travelling to London for the games. 

Thadeo, who represented the minister at an occasion to welcome home Team Tanzania from London on Wednesday night at Blue Pearl Hotel in Dar es Salaam, said that a detailed assessment will be important for both sports associations and the government to chart a way forward as the country bid to improve athletes’ performance at such high level competitive events.  

“We want to know in detail what happened in the past four years, how did they (athletes) attain qualification for the games, how and where did our athletes attend training, who was in charge of their training, where did they fail and what should be done,” said Thadeo, adding that rather than see this as a failure, the country must see it as an opportunity to rebuild. 

Without giving a deadline, Thadeo said the assessment should be submitted to the Tanzania Olympic Committee (TOC), which will eventually submit it to the ministry. He said the minister will then meet all sports associations planning to send athletes to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics Games.  

However, Thadeo praised the local athletes for maintaining honour for the country because none tried an escape, while several other African nations including Cameroon saw their athletes disappearing while in Britain for Olympics.  

David Ojong, the head of the Cameroon delegation, said five boxers, a swimmer and a female football player went missing. The reason for their disappearance is not known, amid some reports that they wanted to stay in the UK for economic reasons.

Athletes from Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire also went missing following the London Olympics. Earlier, the TOC president Ghulam Rashid warned against blame game, saying it will not take this nation anywhere.  

“We shall therefore, not attempt any excuses or indulge in any unproductive blame game,” he said, adding that athletes tried their level best and reached the limit of their peak based on the kind of preparations they went through,” he said. 

“Before pointing a finger to blame anybody one should ask him or her self such question as to whether do we have enough resources to attained the desired results, have we really invested enough in identifying talents, trained coaches and putting up required facilities,” he queried.   

He also pointed out the fact that the London Olympics was not just a bad event for Tanzania alone but also for the entire continent. He said only ten African countries managed to get medals out of 53 nations, a scenario, which forced the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) to conduct an emergency meeting in London to discuss the way forward.

Rashid said countries such as Nigeria, which is regarded as Africa power house did not attain a single medal at the event, while Kenya and Ethiopia also struggled unlike in the past. He said it was noted that other countries outside Africa have resorted to a more sophisticated and scientific training that also targeted winning events that have always been dominated by African nations. 

“There is no shortcut to this, rather than accepting that local sports associations lack resources to prepare athletes. The government and stakeholders should help to invest ... we also need to adopt to such scientific methods of training in order to compete favourably in top level events.

This, coupled with a system that put athletes’ welfare at the heart of planning and an atmosphere devoid of rancour and acrimony, we believed would guarantee us a couple of medals in the future,” he said.