Team Namibia collects nine medals at IPC Berlin Grand Prix

BERLIN, 02 JUL – Team Namibia won nine medals in total at the just ended 2018 world International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Berlin Grand Prix held at the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark from Saturday to Sunday.
Namibia used this IPC Berlin Grand Prix, which was the last of the year, to improve on some of their athletes’ rankings while also getting other athletes classified for their specific categories.
After two days of competition, the Namibian athletes won nine medals; two gold, five silver and two bronze.
Johannes Nambala won gold in the T13 category 400 metre sprint and two silver medals in the 100m and 200m respectively.
Ananias Shikongo won gold in the T11 200m and silver in the T11 400m event. Bradley Murere, who made his debut at the grand prix, won a silver medal in the T46 category 200m event and bronze in the 100m sprint.
Another newcomer walking away with a medal was Bernardo ‘The Bullet’ Immanuel who competes in the same category as Shikongo. He received a T11 200m silver medal.
Dian Jansen, the only athlete doing field events, won a bronze medal for Namibia. The young athlete who does discus, javelin and shot put, walked away with his first medal at a major competition in shot put after throwing his season best of 9.51 metre in the six-kilogramme category.
The team’s coach and manager, Michael Hamukwaya told Nampa after the competition that going forward, they would like to add more young athletes to the team as they are hungrier to win.
“We came with a group of boys only because they are the once who showed commitment and train all the time, but we hope that those who were left out will now start working hard so they also get to travel and compete for the country,” he said.
Hamukwaya added that they are still looking at other grand prix events when the season opens again and hopefully, will take just a team of female athletes to that competition.
“At the moment we have our elite female athletes Johanna Benson and Lahja Ishitile, who this time around did not train, and we could not include them to the team because they were unfit.
“I hope by Tokyo 2020, we will have a bigger pool of female athletes representing the country, but the hard work of recruiting new female athletes will start now when we get back home,” said Hamukwaya.
A total of 41 countries competed at the two-day world IPC Berlin Grand Prix.
(NAMPA)