13 Apr 2025

The 2025 FNB Botswana Golden Grand Prix edition is done and dusted, but the next edition will be bigger and better.

Chief Executive Officer and founder of World Athletics Management, Robert Wagner, said toward the end of the meet, which was held at Gaborone’s National Stadium on Saturday.

According to Wagner, the quality of the athletes who competed ‘suffered a little bit’ because the budget was lower than the last edition, as government had to refurbish the track, which was expensive.

“I also understand that the new government has little resources, and I guess next year we will deliver a very competitive event,” he said. Furthermore, he said he expected more athletes to honour the Grand Prix, especially that Botswana would be hosting the 2026 World Relays, which event would be the first global event coming to Africa.

Wagner said in 2026, the country would host Grand Prix one week before the World Relays, adding that the meet would also be some form of rehearsal.

“We are going to try to bring all equipment from World Relays to make sure that everything is working a week before the event,” he said.

Furthermore, appreciated that most of the athletes who would be competing in the World Relays, would also compete in the Grand Prix.

“The idea is for them to come here and stay for the entire week, that alone means bringing good quality athletes to Botswana, and it saves a lot of costs, because will be using one air ticket for two events,” he said.

In other issues, Wagner said he was happy that despite all the challenges, the Grand Prix took place, describing the Friday night’s level of preparedness as ‘scary’.

He said a week ahead of the meet, things looked blurry as the contractor was still on site trying to finish the track. “On Friday evening the contractor was still on site marking the track, Saturday morning they were still working on lanes. I have been in this game for 37 years, but I have never seen something like that, where something looked impossible and all stakeholders unite and make it possible,” he said.

Furthermore, he said the meet was televised in more than 150 countries, and it looked good, adding that the key thing was to pull through so that people had trust and faith in Botswana.

The country, he said, was recently given the rights to host World Relays next year, hence it was imperative to assure the world that Botswana was ready and could manoeuvre when through challenges and deliver.

“This is TV event, it was televised in 159 channels, and if there had been a two-hour dead air on the channels, the World Relays would have ‘gone’ by Monday morning, because people and organisations need reliable partners,” he said.

World Athletics had been waiting for an African country to host World Relays, and the fact that Botswana managed to be chosen to host the meet, gave the athletics governing body hope that the country would be ready by next year. ENDS