‘Linde Taekwondo Championship crucial for Olympic Qualifiers’
Taekwondo Association of Malawi (Tam) has said the Linde Taekwondo national championship that will take place in Mzuzu on December 27 is crucial to preparing athletes for the Rio Olympic Games Qualifiers that will take place in Morocco in February 2016.
The tournament will bring together the cream of athletes from all the Taekwondo clubs—Blantyre, Zomba, Salima, Lilongwe and Mzuzu.
Malawi Taekwondo national team coach Lovemore Masinga said the tournament would provide an opportunity to the technical team to assess the performance of athletes that would represent the country at the Olympic Qualifiers.
Malawi will be represented by Hassan Wasili, Stain Phiri, George Mbewe and Joseph Phiri.
“Malawi recently missed out on the Africa Taekwondo Championship that took place in Lesotho earlier this month due to lack of funds. It was a big blow for us because we earmarked that tournament to prepare the athletes for the Olympic Qualifiers. The Linde Tournament will accord us such opportunity because we have not really assessed the athletes after they underwent an intensive training by Japanese master Taesung Kwon,” he said.
“Tournaments are always crucial because they provide the best platform for performance assessment rather than just observing the athletes in training. We will work on the weaknesses we will observe in Mzuzu to fully prepare the athletes for the Olympic Qualifiers.”
Masinga added that the tournament would also give other local athletes the opportunity to learn from others.
A USA-based Taekwondo expert Felix Lindierie introduced the tournament last year with the aim of ending the athletes’ dormancy due to inadequacy of competitions.
This year’s tournament is sponsored at K1 million.
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