Outrage in Botswana as use of outdated race starter at African Championships costs Tebogo & Co Paris Olympics slot

Letsile Tebogo and his Botswana relay team-mates have been left disappointed following failure to qualify for Olympics due to the use of an unlicensed starter at African Championships.

The chaotic nature of the African Athletics Championships have came back to haunt Botswana as the country’s 4x100m relay team has not qualified for the Paris Olympics due to the use of an unlicensed starting gun.

Botswana timed 38.19 during their heats at the African Championships in Doula, Cameroon, which would have earned them a slot at the Olympics, but World Athletics has not ratified the time because of the use of an archaic race starter.

As the event started at Japoma Stadium, athletes could be seen being signaled to start the races using a wooden starter clapper that was popular decades ago before it was replaced by modern starter pistols.

The fact that the organisers could not get something as basic as the starter right epitomised the chaotic arrangement of the Championship, Africa’s premier athletics event, and it has now come back to bite hard as Team Botswana, which had sprint sensation Letsile Tebogo, Thapelo Monaiwa, Mothusi Boitshwarelo and Tumo van Wyk will not be in Paris.

“In this era, at this level and we are still using hand times? Even here in Botswana, at local series, if there is no electronic timing, our athletes will not take part because they know that hand times will not take you anywhere,” a disappointed Botswana senior team coach Justice Dipeba said, as quoted by the country’s outlet Mmegi.

“We all knew the importance of these Championships. It was a last chance meet for African athletes to qualify for the Olympics.”

The African Championships made news for its poor organisation with Tebogo and Ivorian sprinter Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith among those who complained about bad treatment.

“My team have to take a yango (taxi) to go to the stadium because the transportation sucks,” Ta Lou-Smith posted on social media in a series of tweets complaining about the situation.

“I am hurt and disappointed. There is so much I wanted to say about the organisation of the African championship.

“I want to cry because why? And on top of that, we on the taxi we see another African team with a police escort. Like why not do it for everybody?”

Tebogo also hit out at the organisers for subjecting athletes to poor conditions while threatening not to run the final if things do not change.

"We'll see about the final because there's a lot of disorganised stuff, so maybe I'm going to run or I'm not going to run," said Tebogo.

"You do warm up, you stay one hour to be called, we know that time is money in athletics. You can't do warm-up sit and then be called.”

South African sprinter Shaun Maswanganyi joined the list of dissatisfied athletes when he left the championships over what he termed a ‘risk to his health.’