20 Mar 2024

Botswana’s envisaged 10 medals from the African Games in Ghana is crystallising after Botswana Taekwondo athlete, Karabo Kula registered a bronze medal raising the country’s medals to seven.

Kula’s medal added to the ones already won by karate, swimming, athletics and beach volleyball.

Although Taekwondo is not a popular sport in Botswana, Kula’s performance against her South African counterpart Donica Tafel got Batswana talking in different social media platforms.

During the match, Kula did not give her opponent a breather as she applied roundhouse kick, reverse side kick, axe kick and knocked her out to proceed to the quarter finals.

In the quarter finals, she was up against Oluwatobiloba Makanjuola and continued with her good performance to whitewash her opponent 2-0.

However in the semifinals she met the experienced Tunisian Dhahri, who is ranked second in Africa, but Kula lost the match 2-0 to bag bronze medal.

In an interview during her bout against South African opponent, the team’s manager Oarabile Bogatsu said they noticed that Kula was a little bit shaky given that it was her first bout after a very long time.

“We told her to just go for it and go for the knockout. She did that and it gave her the morale to the next fight, and at the end of everything she won a bronze for the country,” he said.

Against Dhahri, he said the athlete lost by a point, but he was happy with her performance, adding that Kula also won a  bronze medal during the 2019 African Games in Morocco.

In other matches, in the women under 73kg, Shadi Mokopotsa, who was making maiden appearance on the international scene, lost 2-0 to Mouega Urgence of Gabon

Bogatsu said he was impressed by Mokopotsa given that it was her first match at an international stage, adding that the athlete did her best although she lost.

He said the athlete was young adding that they would prepare her more to reach a certain stage where she would then be able to bring results.

“We are looking at the next World Championships and expectations is that she will be among athletes who will compete there,” he said.

Basketball 3x3 Botswana, who are in Pool D together with Algeria, Kenya and Zambia started the competition on a higher note on Tuesday as they won 13-10 against Kenya and won 21-20 against Zambia.  Ends