Namibia’s Olympic Games silver medallist Christine Mboma and her counterpart Beatrice Masilingi will set the track on fire in the 200 metre (m) sprint at the Athletics Namibia (AN) Grand Prix this weekend.

AN will be hosting its second Grand Prix of the season on Friday and Saturday at the Independence Stadium, with 10 athletic clubs currently registered to compete.

In an interview with Nampa on Thursday, Henk Botha the coach of sensational young sprinters Mboma and Masilingi said they were excited about the first Grand Prix in Swakopmund but their focus is now turned to Saturday.

“This coming weekend the girls are going to compete in 200m and we are looking forward to the championships,” said Botha.

He added that 2022 is going to be very busy and they took a decision to focus most of their attention on outdoor events instead of indoors as they wanted to do.

“Unfortunately, we will not be doing the indoor 60m sprint as we anticipated last year. Physically we are not where we want to be. We are training for mid-May, that is when the international season will be starting and we will be busy,” he said.

He stated that with the international athletics season looming, they still have a couple of things to do but they will be ready for the 2022 athletics season.

“We have a long season that starts in May and we are also preparing to compete in the African Champs, World Champs, Commonwealth Games and the Diamond League, so we thought it better to prepare for the outdoor season than the indoor championships,” Botha said.

AN secretary-general Martha Emvula told this agency that everything is in place for AN’s second Grand Prix of the year.

“We have 10 clubs that sent in their entries for this weekend thus far, we hope to have huge participation at this Grand Prix but with Grand Prix events being hosted back to back, the numbers might not be huge,” said Emvula.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency