Namibia Paralympic Committee (NPC) Secretary General, Michael Hamukwaya, says more athletes with disabilities need to be classified for their results to be recognised by the International Paralympic Committee ranking.
Over 12 track and field event athletes representing the NPC competed at the 2022 Athletics Namibia Senior National Championships held in the capital over the weekend.
In an interview with Nampa on Monday, Hamukwaya said despite the athletes’ incredible performance at the championships, some of their results will not be recorded as they are not internationally classified.
“We have four national classifiers, but their results only work locally and not internationally. As the NPC, we need to build a pathway for our classifiers within the country to be internationally accredited as classifiers and this can only be done if we register them to go through courses at big international competitions,” Hamukwaya said.
He added that at the moment the NPC has several young athletes in its national team who need to be internationally classified.
“Our athletes are improving but what needs to be done is getting them classified. These young athletes are doing well, therefore they need to compete at the international Grand Prix for them to be classified,” Hamukwaya said.
The Secretary-General also stated the qualifying period for the Commonwealth Games is ending in May and their attention will now turn to a group of athletes that are on the long list.
“We have athletes on the shortlist for the Commonwealth Games who did exceptionally well over the weekend. We hope they will continue doing so as our goal is to have a bigger number of athletes qualifying for the African Games that will be held in Ghana in 2023,” he said.
Hamukwaya also said that 2022 is a very important year for the NPC, which aims to have all its young athletes classified so that when the African Games are held in Ghana they will only have two or three that will need to be classified.
“We have so much potential with upcoming young stars in sports such as powerlifting, boccia and swimming but we don’t have internationally classifiers in the country,” he added.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
