AUSC Region 5 Youth Games moved

THE African Union Sports Council Region 5 have rescheduled the next edition of their Youth Games to next year.

The AUSC Region Five Youth Games, which are held after every two years were supposed to take place this year in December.

However, the AUSC Region Five chief executive officer Stanley Mutoya said the Games have been postponed to May next year.

“We had to make a conscious decision to say already this year is a heavy year for our governments.

“We are currently witnessing the Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire, which is going to end in February and then in March, all roads lead to Accra, Ghana where the 13th edition of the African Games is going to be running from the 8th to the 23rd of March.

“And then from there we are going to Paris for the Olympic Games from July to August. But not only that we will remain in Paris for the Paralympic Games in September, so it was going to be heavy then to have the Region Five Youth Games in December.

“So we made a conscious decision then to have the Games in May of 2025, which we have consulted with the host country,” said Mutoya. Namibia are the hosts for the Games. Initially Mozambique were set to host the 2024 Games while Namibia host in 2026 but they swapped as the former have some concerns they want to address.

Mozambique will now host the Games in 2026. Mutoya said they are set to have a meeting with the different sports confederations next month since the Games were serving as a qualifier for some of the sporting disciplines to different continental and international competitions.

“We will engage with the confederations end of February to agree on the modalities.”

Mutoya said they are still looking forward to an exciting year with other programmes and activities expected to take place during the year.

He is hoping the Region has more athletes qualifying for Paris 2024 Olympic Games, due to take place from July 26 to August 11.

The AUSC Region 5 chief executive officer noted that while their podium performance pro-gramme introduced in 2015 has not yet produced the intended results they would want to see more athletes qualifying.

“As we look forward in terms of our aspirations . . . we see an exciting year.

“Our podium performance programme which we introduced in 2015, of course it hasn’t really given us the results that we wanted. But we are hoping to see more of our podium performance athletes in the different countries at least qualifying for the Games.

“Even those that have not qualified we are looking into them now focusing on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. And we have quite a number of those young people who are on the periphery under the Region Five podium performance programme in the different countries.

“But we see it being quite a challenging year as well because of the disruption that happened because it takes 10 000 hours to produce an Olympic athlete, which is almost eight to 10 years. So two and a half of those years were actually disrupted (due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

“So our podium performance programme received some disruptions but we still remain hopeful that as a Region we should see good performances from the likes of Botswana, the 4x400m team. We are looking forward to them also making an impact.

“We are looking into South Africa, we are looking into Zambia’s boxers. Zambia has got al-ready four boxers who are part of podium performance programme who are on the verge of making it to the Olympics.

“While we don’t have podium athletes in Zimbabwe, we are happy with the rower that have al-ready qualified in Zimbabwe, the two athletes (including one from athletics) that have qualified but hoping more athletes (qualify).”

Under the podium performance programme, the AUSC Region 5 has got excellence athletes, which is the long-term and then elite, which is the short-term.

“So our elite will now be 2028 and excellence will be 2032. So we will be looking into which athletes can be supported to be in that programme. So that’s basically what we want to see and also putting more effort around matters to do with capacity,” Mutoya said. The Region is made up of Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.