TANZANIA Amateur Volleyball Association (TAVA) has received the news of postponement of the Olympic Games for a year in positive sought.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) this week has announced that the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have been postponed until next year because of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. The event due to begin on 24 July, will now take place ‘no later than summer of 2021’.
Alfred Selengia a TAVA secretary general told the ‘africa-press’ in the city yesterday during national beach volleyball training camp at Coco Beach that the decision is very important because it aims to protect athletes and World in general.
“Olympic Games bring together about ten to fifteen million people around the globe; In this manner it is very easy to disseminate coronavirus.
“I understand that there are side effects for the organisers and players in general, for example since early this month national team players were in camp in Dar es Salaam, we were in right track ready for the qualifying event,” said Selengia, who also serves as the team’s head coach.
Confederation of Africa Volleyball (CAVB) had given Tanzania the honour to host the Regional Beach Volleyball Championship which serves as the Africa Tokyo 2020 Olympic Group B qualifying second round. It was scheduled take place from March 27th to 29th this year at Coco Beach.
But CAVB had already postponed all regional competitions from March 16th to April 30th . Selengia added that TAVA was ready to host the five-country event for the two qualifying final slots.
“But, now we have to dissolve the camp on Sunday and wait for the further communications, we do not know whether CAVB will continue with current stage or should have to start as fresh with qualification next year, these are current sociological effects.”
He added that the association has already incurred several preparation coasts and also had few sponsors who were ready to assist the event. But still everybody’s health should be priority at this point.
“In the other hand we do not know what will happen to our players next year, they are growing up some might want to get married too and it could affect their performance as this time around they are all in good condition and more than ready,” Still, Selengia said they have to remain positive and pray to God that once the event returned all players will be ready too as they gear up for the first Olympic games.
The national team members camped for the qualifying tournament are David Neeke who pairs with Ford Edward and second team formed by Shukuru Ally who pairs with Said Alhaji.
The team went through to the second round after clinching Pool 7 Africa Z one V Beach Volleyball champion’s title in the event held at Lido Beach in Entebbe, Uganda December last year.
Tanzania were due to face tough test against other pools’ champions, including South Africa the Z one VI pool 9 winner, Ghana winner (Pool 3 Z one iii), Niger (Pool 4 Z one iii) winner and Sudan enter as best loser from Pool 7 Z one V.
