Speaking during the Annual General Assembly (AGA) this week, the BNOC president, Colonel Botsang Tshenyego said the subvention as opposed to general expenditure needed in the general course of business has proven inadequate for several years. However, Tshenyego said this year, there has been a slight increase in the operations budget. “Games are the biggest consumer of funding although funding is released directly to the games as projects. The money usually comes on the eve of the games to the extent that we are unable to support the preparations. It is something I believe going forward can be improved,” Tshenyego said. He said the BNOC shall always remain grateful for the support they get from the government, despite the nationwide cash flow hiccup, which the country is experiencing, including international donors.
Furthermore, Tshenyego said the bid for the 2030 and 2034 Commonwealth Games will open early in 2025 and Botswana has the potential to bid, as they were able to bid for AFCON 2027. For her part, the BNOC secretary-general, Dorothy Tlagae-Gaseitsiwe, said this final year of the current strategic plan and the quadrennial cycle from which Botswana participated in at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, ends on a high note. “Botswana was amongst the 204 nations that competed at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games with a team of 14 athletes. This was the same number of athletes that team Botswana sent to the previous edition in Tokyo 2020. Our target was two medals after an impressive bronze medal by the 4x400m relay at the previous edition of the same games. The medal target was achieved with the team attaining two medals, one gold from the men’s 200m as well as silver medal from men’s 4x400m relay. The two medals placed Botswana at position 55 on the overall medal table,” she said.
Tlagae-Gaseitsiwe said most of the male athletes made a debut at the Olympics and that only three had competed in the Olympics and all other major events that the team featured at in the past year like the World Championships and the Africa Championships. She said the highest achievement in the men’s individual events was the 200m final where Letsile Tebogo attained a gold medal followed by another achieved the men’s 4x400m silver medal. Tebogo and Tshepiso Masalela were also in the finals of 100m and 800m (both running personal bests) respectively whilst Collen Kebinatshipi and Bayapo Ndori, narrowly missed the final with Kebinatshipi running a personal best (PB) by tying to nine position. Regarding the other non-performance related factors, Tlagae-Gaseitsiwe said the plan was to qualify six sporting codes. “However, this was not achieved with a decrease from a total of four at the Tokyo 2020 games to a total of two at Paris 2024,” Tlagae-Gaseitsiwe said.
She explained that traditionally Botswana has been sending more men than women to most major games. “For the Paris 2024 games, there were less women in the team compared to the previous games. This is an unimpressive statistic considering the BNOC’s strategic objective of increasing the number of women at the games,” she said.
