From ELIAS CHIPEPO In Brazzaville –
ZAMBIA’S hopes of winning medals in judo were quashed after the remaining five judokas were eliminated from the competition that came to an end yesterday at the Congo Brazzaville 2015 All-Africa Games (AAG).
Unlike the case at the Maputo 2011 AAG where Esther Sandu bagged bronze, the 11th edition saw the judokas failing to impress, especially the duo of Boas Munyonga and Mathews Punza, who are in Uzbekistan on a two-year training programme.
With the six judokas eliminated on Sunday, Munyonga, winner of a bronze medal at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, remained Zambia’s only hope but he failed to go past Africa number one Ben Ammar of Tunisia in the second round.
Munyonga started on a bright note beating Kenyan Joseph Ochieng in the first round but found the going tough against Ammar, who by Press time, had advanced to the finals of the -81 kg category.
“It was a tough fight, the guy from Tunisia was good and he is also the number one judoka in Africa and fighting him was not easy. But I will continue working hard for the upcoming competitions,” Munyonga said.
Edward Kamwandi, who was on bye in the first round, lost his match to tournament highly-ranked judoka Zack Piontek of South Africa in the -90kg event while Agida Phiri was beaten by Bilal Zouani of Algeria.
Phiri then dropped into the repechage event (loser’s pool) but was defeated by Deo Graica Ngokaba of Congo Brazzaville.
In the women events, Mildred Nyondo lost to Rita Ebere of Nigeria via a yuko in the -78kg while Lydia Zulu lost her +78kg fight to Loko Liliane of Congo Brazzaville to wrap up a bad outing for the judo team.
Other judokas who represented Zambia at the pan-African Games are Abigail Chindele, Lestina Siapeya, Joshua Nyondo, Victor Syamwampe, Mathews Punza and Naomi Zungu.
Meanwhile, coach Moola Lipimile said the tournament was tough as the Zambian athletes faced highly-ranked opponents.
But Lipimile said it was high time both judokas and coaches were abreast with the new dynamics involved in judo and that the levels of competition at the AAG were high.
“Zambia is still using old styles of fighting when judo techniques are changing every day. Coaches need to be abreast with the latest changes in the sport and this should start at club level unlike us teaching basics at national level,” he said.
He said the weather conditions and delay by the organising committee to allocate the judokas with training facilities heavily contributed to the poor performance of the athletes.
Lipimile said it was important for the judokas to start emulating other countries that sent their athletes for various training competitions so that they could keep up with the changes in the sport.
“We just have to start preparations early. As for this competition, we arrived early but the organisers could not give us where to train, forcing us to train on hard floors which is not conducive but risky because Mildred even injured her ankle in the process,” he said.
Lipimile said the coaching bench would now shift focus towards ensuring that Munyonga, Punza and Chindele got the needed points to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.