Africa-Press – Tanzania. NO better word than ‘fight for your country’ crowns the three marathoners, who have qualified for the Olympic Games now raging on Japanese capital, Tokyo.
The three athletes, all of them specialised in 42km Full Marathon, led by inspirational Alphonce Simbu are Failuna Abdi Matanga and the little known runner, Gabriel Geay.
The athletes are scheduled to leave here on July 29th for their Tokyo Games campaign early this year received a major boost from Nagai, the city that will host our athletes.
We are grateful to Nagai city for hosting Team Tanzania and that is good motivation to the team and the Tanzanians, as the city will rally behind our athletes and motivate them to win medals.
We have seen how the city is committed to ensure the success of Tanzania in the games, and the words of the city’s Mayor Uchiya that the success of Tanzanian team in games can strengthen our relationship with Nagai city carry an urgent note to us. We are again very grateful to the Japanese city for wishing to continue to support Tanzania even after the end of the Olympic Games.
We insist our athletes in Tokyo Olympic to utilise Nagai city support as call of courage that propels them to work hard so that they come back home with medals. We would also like to advise the Tanzania Olympic Committee to ensure the number of athletes in the future games is increased by monitoring closely all sports that groom athletes of the Olympic caliber and support them technically and financially.
We know and our athletes know that winning medals in Olympics will be possible only if you train hard and meet the qualification standards. We are very hopeful for medals this time as our last Olympic medals won by Filbert Bayi and Suleiman Nyambui came here in 1980, about 41 years ago.
We wish our athletes all the best in Tokyo and we promise to rally behind them since they will be parading the Tanzanian flag there. We end up reminding all Tanzanians to be part of the Tokyo 2020 mission by supporting and motivating those who will represent us there.
