From SHAMAOMA MUSONDA  In Bulawayo –
SWIMMERS Tilka Paljk and Alex Goveia won Team-Zambia two bronze medals at the Africa Union Sports Council (AUSC) Region Five Games that came to a close in Zimbabwe last night.
Goveia and Paljk’s performances capped one of the most successful outings for the swimming team and brought the swimmers medal count at these games to five and overall 27 for Team-Zambia at the 2014 edition of the Under-20 Games.
Paljk, who two days earlier minted silver medal in the 50m breaststroke, added bronze to her collection by finishing third in the 50m freestyle with a time of 27.75 seconds.
In the boys’ 50 butterfly, Goveia finished third in the race timing 25.36 seconds to ensure he got his second medal at the games.
Whereas Team-Zambian was celebrating Goveia’s latest medal, the swimmer was left beating himself for missing out what could have easily been a gold medal.
He had the fastest time from the heats and took Lane-Four but a late reaction after the buzzer saw him start poorly but powered himself past a horde of rivals in the waters to get a medal finish as South Africans took the first two positions.
Had Goveia won that race, it would have been the only gold medal the South Africans would not have picked up from the waters.
With Goveia and Paljk each winning two medals, Zambia fifth medal from swimming came from Alex Axiotis who won a bronze in the 100m breaststroke with a time of 1:07.69 minutes.
Director of Sport Bessy Chilemu hailed the swimmers for putting up one of their most accomplished showing at a high level tournament urging them to work even harder.
“Swimming has done really well here. They have giving us medals now. This shows things are been done right and what we now need is to intensify whatever has been done recently.
“I have also noticed that in the Lusaka Games, they featured some really young kids who have won medals here. This shows some long term planning. So let us also focus on talent identification and spreading of the net wide,” Chilemu said.