Coach Botha readies for 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games

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Coach Henk Botha of Namibia’s two sensational female sprinters Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, said they are hard at work in preparing for the rescheduled 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

The coach and his 18-year-old sprinters will make their maiden appearance at the Olympic Games when they compete in the 200 metres (m) sprint at the global championship They are expected to depart for Tokyo, Japan on 22 July 2021.

In an interview with Nampa on Wednesday, Botha said they had a good training session on Tuesday night and they expect to improve on their work in the coming days.

“We did acceleration in our last training and the times we clocked last night on 150m was unreal even though the sprinters don’t like the cold weather. Despite the training looking good we are going to start working on the time that we want to run in Japan,” he said.

What is important at the moment, he added is getting the athletes to adapt to a different training schedule because of the different time zones between Namibia and Japan.

“What we are going to do from now on is to change the times that we train so that the athletes will not struggle so much when we arrive in Japan,” said Botha.

Meanwhile, the coach further said despite the athletes being barred from competing in the 400m by World Athletics because of their natural testosterone levels being high the athletes are more focused, strong and motivated,” he said.

Team Namibia will be represented by 11 athletes in five different sport codes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games set to start from 25 July to 08 August in Japan.

Source: Namibia News Agency