Moorosi Tsiane
A 38-member team representing the country at the Region V Africa Union Sport Council (AUSC) Games reported for a week-long camp yesterday as part of preparations for the tournament scheduled for Angola from 3 to 19 December this year.
Lesotho athletes will be competing in the disciplines of athletics (12), tennis (4), netball (12), boxing (6) and visually-impaired athletics (4) in the annual regional games.
According to the team’s chef de mission, Limpho Rakoto, the boxing and athletics teams would camp at Durham Link while the netball team would be based at the Girl Guides facility.
She said the tennis team would not be part of the camp, with the three players attending their training sessions from home, while the fourth participant, Lebelo Mosehlenyane, is in the United States.
“The camp will end on 9 October, and will be their first camp as a team because most of our players are still in school. We took the advantage of the independence holidays to convene it now,” Rakoto said.
She said the camp was only meant to fine tune preparations.
“The teams are doing the final touches because they had long started preparations. The only challenge, like I have said, is most of our athletes are still going to school, so it is not easy to get them whenever we need them.”
Rakoto also stressed they would compete at the tournament and not just participate.
“The country has a good record in this tournament since our athletes have been winning medals there. This year, nothing has changed and we are still going there to compete and not just to add numbers,” she said. “We know how important it is for us to do well in these regional competition before we dream of conquering the whole continent.”