04 Aug 2022

Team Botswana coach, Justice Dipeba, is optimistic that some athletes, who are competing in semi-finals today, will proceed to the finals at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

The coach said in an interview that he was impressed by the athletes’ performance in the heats.

Lydia Jele, Anthony Pesela, and Zibani Ngozi will be competing in 400m, while Boitumelo Masilo will be doing 800 metres.

Both men and women’s 4x 400m relay teams will also be action. However, the coach said the women team would go staright to the final since some teams had pulled out due to unfavourable programme.   

“Even for us it is going to be a challenge. The men’s relay team will compete in the morning while the 400m semi final is in the evening. So we will have to pull one of them to run in the relay. It is going to be a tricky situation, so we have to be careful because the same athlete will be running his flat race in the evening,” he said.

Dipeba, however, said athletes knew the importance of making it to the next round.

“This is going to be a tough moment for us and we take this seriously.  We have to finish in the top two for us to make it to the final. So we are not going to take any chance, we are going to make sure that athletes know what it takes and make sure they finish on the top,” he said.

Talking about the women’s performance, he said they did not perform as expected looking at the times they clocked.

“We have been going through a rough patch in terms of their performance. This is something we have to look at and see how we can fix it. You can see that their times were not impressive,” he said.

In the 400m heats, Scotch finished on position two with 45.75. Ngozi claimed position one in heat six with 46.43 while Pesela finished in position two with a time of 46.55.

In the 400 metres women, Jele finished on position four with a time 53.24, but  qualified to semi-finals as the fastest loser.

Christine Botlogetswe failed to proceed to the next round after clocking 54.60 in the heats.

In the men’s 800 metres, Masilo sailed through after finishing on second position 1:47.30, while his team mate Tshepiso Masalela finished fifth with 1:49.12 and did not qualify for the next stage.

In the 100 metres semi-final, Oarabile Tshosa finished sixth with 11.53 while Tsaone Sebele also bowed out of the competition after fishing on eighth position with a time of 11.71. ENDS