Kenya’s national judo team won its first international team medal at the Senior Africa Championships that ended on Saturday in Antananarivo, Madagascar.
The team of 16 judokas settled for the bronze medal after tying with the home team in third place as Algeria claimed gold with Senegal going for silver in the championships that doubled up as the Tokyo Olympic Games qualifiers.
Two judokas Joseph Mwangi in Under 100kgs and Alice Chebet in over 78kgs reached the semifinals with three others John Kairabi (Under 66kgs), Carlos Ochieng (Under 60kgs) and Diana Kana (Under 70kgs) reaching the bronze finals.
Mwangi lost to eventual winner Ramadhan Darwish from Egypt in the semi-finals before also going down to Gabonese Luc Manongho in the battle for bronze.
Chebet went down to Monica Sagna from Senegal in the semifinals.
The event gave the Kenyans a good stage to accumulate points to qualify for the Olympics.
Each player has accumulated points with those reaching semifinals having earned 216 points towards the Olympic qualifying.
“We are hopeful that cumulatively they will be able to qualify for the Olympics, having been left with six qualifying events which end in May next year,” said the team manager Duncan Chemiryo noting that Kenya’s high ranking players are short of 468points, which is possible to get if they get the chance to participate in the upcoming events.
Kenya hopes to send judokas for the next Olympic qualifying event in Doha on January 13-14 followed by Poland on February 26-28.
Kenya Judo Federation president Shadrack Maluki noted that it was tough for his players considering that the sport was considered high risk as the world battled the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We didn’t get good time to train but the two weeks we were allowed to train the national team under strict conditions helped get the above results,” said Maluki adding that given more time and facilitation to compensate lost time during this Covid-19 period, they can post better results in the subsequent qualifiers.
Maluki appreciated the support they received from the Ministry of Sports to have the team attend the event in Madagascar.
“They did what they could during these hard times to ensure we participated but also got closer to qualifying. It’s this moment that we have to appreciate the government,” said Maluki.
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