adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Taekwondo team scooped three bronze medals to finish fourth at the Confederation of Southern Africa Taekwondo Association Ambassador’s Cup tournament held over the weekend in Pretoria, South Africa. The tournament, held at the University of Pretoria, featured athletes from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The hosts were the overall winners of the competition.
Zimbabwe, who last participated in the tournament in 2006, had five athletes competing at the event — Admire Tshitshiliza (fin-weight), Brian Nduna (flyweight) and Vusimuzi Ncube (featherweight) South Africa-based Elton Mumvumba (bantamweight) and Doubt Pangani (heavyweight).
Nduna and Tshitshiliza won bronze in their respective categories while Peter Karibe, who was part of the officials, got a bronze for good management and organisation.
The team came back yesterday and Karibe, who is the Zimbabwe Taekwondo Association secretary-general, said they were beaten on numbers as some of the participating nations fielded big teams.
“South Africa did not specify on the teams, we went there as teams of eight of which we had five athletes while South Africa had their provinces and clubs competing in the tournament, I think they occupied 90 percent of the total number of athletes taking part.
“We were given short notice about the event and other countries were preparing for the tournament for the past six months, others were in Korea preparing.
“For us, I had to just call the athletes at the last minute for the trip, we did not go into camp but we managed to get bronze medals,” said Karibe.
Karibe saluted his team for putting up a good show at the tournament.
“If we had been given six months to train and got allowances for our athletes, I believe they would have won gold because I think the skills they displayed were of a high standard.
“The performance of the athletes was good, I asked the panel of judges from Lesotho and Swaziland (for their opinion) and they said Zimbabwe was of high standard, especially Brian (Nduna), he showed the Olympic standard.
“Admire is also highly skilled despite his size, he is small but his performance was good” said Karibe.
ZITA vice president, Wickliff Mutambanengwe, said they would have done more if they had prepared well for the tourney.
“Unfortunately, the tournament was badly organised, there were juniors and we had not sent a junior team. However, we also faced financial challenges and the guys had to cater for the trip on their own.
“We hope to approach our sponsors who used to support us and obviously rally others to come on board so that we would be adequately prepared for other upcoming events,” said Mutambanengwe.
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