SWIMMING FOCUSES ON PARIS 2024
While Botswana Swimming Sport Association (BSA) sent only one athlete to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, James Freeman, plans to improve his performance ahead of Paris 2024 Olympics and preparations are already underway.
BSSA last week sent their junior team to Ghana where they were competing in the Africa Junior Swimming Championships. International competitions are part of BSSA’s development programme, as they
give athletes an opportunity to grow and gain the experience to compete at continental and global stage.
“We develop swimmers through training every day and sending them to international competitions if funds permit. We do so to prepare them for major events such as the Olympics but first they must get to experience first-hand how competition is like out there, and they are able to learn and see how best they can improve with their coaches,” BSSA Public Relations Officer, Roseline Seleka shared. BSSA last year hosted the CANA ZONE V swimming championships where a
lot of young stars had an opportunity to showcase their talent. During this event, talents such as Andile Becker and Junior Keitsile showed their potential to compete against elite swimmers in the near future. As BSSA look to send more swimmers to Paris in 2024, the association is confident that with the strides they are making, they will have more representation at the Olympic Games. “We could’ve sent more than one swimmer to Tokyo 2020 but unfortunately most of our top swimmers could not train properly due to COVID-19 restrictions. Andile and Junior did well last year in the CANA Zone V championships and that motivated a lot of our young swimmers, particularly as we were the hosts. So we do have young upcoming swimmers who are motivated and are training hard knowing that Paris 2024 is around the corner. We are very hopeful that we’ll send more than two swimmers to Paris 2024,” Roseline shared.
Even though the six swimmers that were sent to Ghana did not bring home any medal, according to BSSA mouthpiece, they did not set any medal targets for the team.
“We never really set them medal targets, but that does not mean we didn’t think they are not capable of bringing home some medals. The major short term objective is exposure which gives swimmers experience as competition takes them out of their comfort zone and gives them a chance to improve their Personal best records. Long term objectives is to qualify for major events such as the Commonwealth Games, World Championships and Olympics,” She highlighted.
In addition, Roseline stated that they are content with the performance of the team that went to Ghana.
“Our swimmers did pretty well in the final results of their individual events as most of them improved their times. The difficulty they faced was that they competed against older swimmers because their age category was classified as junior ranging from 10-18 years old; so it was difficult to get a medal. They swam their hearts out and we are happy with their progress,” she observed.
One of the athletes expected to make it to Paris is USA based swimmer, Naomi Ruele who missed out on last year’s Olympic Games due insufficient time to prepare ahead of the global spectacle.