By SANDRA MWILA –
THE Zambia Judo Association (ZJA) has failed to raise K67,000 needed to send four judokas for the African Open Championship in Mauritius which acts as one of the qualifying series for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
ZJA general secretary Mabvuto Ng’uni said in an interview that missing out on competing for points at the African Championship was unfortunate and might risk chances of qualifying.
Zambia was supposed to be represented at the qualifiers set for Saturday and Sunday by Mathews Punza and Boas Munyonga, who are in Uzbekistan for a two year training camp scholarship under the International Judo Federation (IJF),  as well as Michael Mwabi and Abigail Chindele.
“Our judokas will miss out on the African Open Championship which is a Rio Olympics qualifier because of finances. The National Olympics Committee helped us with other logistics and the association was supposed to secure air tickets but we failed because it has become expensive now due to the high dollar rate,” Ng’uni said.
Ng’uni said the athletes are supposed to participate in a series of qualifiers to accumulate points to qualify for the Olympics.
“Chances of the Zambia athletes qualifying to Rio are dependent on their participation in the series of qualifiers lined up. When they win fights they accumulate points for qualifying and if they don’t participate it becomes a problem. He lamented that most of the times athletes fail to qualify for tournaments is not that they did not prepare technically but because of missing out on a number of championships.