African continent Youth Olympic preparation camps working

To better prepare athletes for Games conditions, Olympic Solidarity and World Archery have organised continental training camps for competitive athletes in developing countries.

The Americas held a camp last year – then Africa followed suit in April 2014. Hosted by the Namibian city of Windhoek before the African Archery Championships, the youth training meeting gathered 28 athletes from six countries – with seven archers, and five officials, funded by Olympic Solidarity.

Out of the nine archers who shot 60 metres at the camp, five then recorded personal bests during the African championships. The three Olympic Solidarity funded archers who shot 60 metres all won Nanjing 2014 quota places for their countries.

Eqyptian Seifeldin ELSEHEY, who won the tournament, praised the mental training aspect of the camp, which he thought was a huge success.

“World Archery has been striving to develop archery in Africa for decades,” said development director Pascal COLMAIRE. “Windhoek was a huge step forward for the continent. Congratulations to The Home of Archery – the club here in Namibia – and World Archery Africa for the progress made in performance and event organisation.”

Five athletes from Africa should compete at Nanjing: boys from Benin, Egypt, Libya and Namibia and a girl from Egypt have quota places. Archers fulfilling four of these five spaces have met the minimum qualifying score – an unprecedented performance level in the continent.