Namibia finished ninth out of 25 participating African countries at the 17th African Senior Karate Championships and ninth African Junior Karate Championships held in Kigali, Rwanda from 28 August to 2 September.
Namibia won a total of five medals consisting of one silver and three bronze medals at the junior championships on the first day, and another bronze medal at the senior championships on the second day.
On the first day, Myvonne Swart led the way with a silver medal in kata and a bronze medal in kumite, while Michele Tjimuku won a bronze medal in kumite, and Freddy Mwiya Junior a bronze medal in kumite.
On the second day, Rasmus Esterhuizen won a bronze medal in the senior kumite category.
Namibia was one of only 15 countries to win medals at the event, while it also built on the achievement of coming third at the African Region 5 Championship held in Botswana earlier this year. In Rwanda, Namibia once again came third among the southern African nations, finishing behind South Africa (fourth overall) and Botswana (eighth overall).
Following the performance of Namibia’s karate athletes in Rwanda, the Namibia Karate Union (Naku) is now planning to send a small delegation to attend the World Karate Federation’s Senior World Championships in October as part of its athlete development plan.
The president of Naku, Cornelius D’Alton commented as follows:
“We are extremely excited about our achievements this year and the road ahead for karate in Namibia. With karate being an Olympic sport and being recently categorised by the Ministry of Sport as a Developmental Sport Code, we have decided to participate at both continental and international events to evaluate our standard of karate. We are therefore very pleased to say that Namibia is back on the African karate scene.
“However, we are facing a real challenge to get a team funded for the World Championships and creating an opportunity for our athletes to gain valuable Olympic Qualifying points. The African Karate Championships results also count towards Olympic qualifying and we hope to measure ourselves in October against the best in the world to see what training interventions need to be done to assist our athletes to be successful at continental and international events.”
The Namibian delegation in Rwanda consisted of 16 athletes, including eight junior and four senior athletes.
Kindly follow us on twitter:@AfricanVoice2
