Bakwadi’s Olympic dream crushes
At the mature age of 35 years, national team athlete Sensei Ofentse Bakwadi’s ambition to be an Olympian has vanished into thin air and the Kata sensation is now looking to pursue other career paths such as grooming future Olympians.
Coaching has been Bakwadi’s call, as the African champion, also known as Shakes, has a burning passion for karate, both competitively and developmental.
“Not qualifying for the Olympics has brought excruciating pain to me and this has been, by far, the most unbearable feeling I’ve ever had to endure. It’s a new kind of pain,” he recently posted on his social media.
In an interview this week, Shakes, who became
a household name by becoming one of the best kata practitioners in the world, said his main focus is now to push young athletes to qualify for Global events.
“I want to have a young athlete qualify for future global events, I have a big pool of young gifted next generation superstars at my club.”
Looking back, he says, not qualifying for the Olympics has taught him that nothing comes easy in life. “It was straining to qualify for the Olympics. I had to get used to being broke and sacrificing certain things to put all efforts and resources towards qualification.
“But it has made me stronger, I learnt that nothing comes easy and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all after all the excruciating hours of preparation,” he stressed.
Currently ranked 37th in the World, Shakes is of the view that if he was in another sport like Athletics, he would definitely be going to the Olympics. “This is because in athletics, top 48 athletes qualify for the games. But karate is special, it needs only world top 10.”
He also stressed that one of the reasons he did not qualify is that karate was not part of the Olympics programme before the Tokyo Olympics recently.
“This brought a lot of optimism and excitement to me and I immediately intensified my training to qualify for these games.” He sacrificed his academics, and put his pursuit for masters on hold for years just so he could compete at the Olympics.
At his peak, Shakes became double Africa champion when he solidified his status as the undisputed Africa champion, by winning gold in the individual kata and team kata, during the UFAK Africa Karate Championships held in Cameroon back in 2017.
He was ranked 11th in the World Karate Federation charts in the same year and drastically improved in 2018, when he now ranked 4th in the world, qualifying for the World Beach Games in 2019. However, some believe age caught up with him hence his Olympic dream was shuttered.
“My Olympic dream has been officially shattered but my karate journey is about to take off and yes, I have no regrets and would gladly do it again if given a chance.”