IT has been another action-packed sporting year for Zambia with several disciplines scoring successful stories on the international scene.
A lot of success was delivered on various sporting platforms ranging from athletics, badminton, boxing, judo, chess, netball and football among several others.
I will highlight some of the good results which came Zambia’s way in 2014 from several international competitions.
As the curtains for 2014 close this week, the major highlight for Zambian sport was arguably budding sprinter, Sydney Siame winning a gold medal in 100m at the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games in China.
Siame’s gold was Zambia’s first from the Olympics despite this particular medal coming from the juniors’ competition.
We also saw multi-talented Kabange Mupopo being crowned Africa’s women 400m champion before she with Saviour Kombe were picked to represent Africa at the World Athletics Championships in Morocco.
Mupopo, who also guided the Zambia women football team to the first-ever African Women Championship, struck a silver medal at the World Athletics Championships while Kombe got bronze in 4X400m relay.
Budding badminton player, Kalombo Mulenga was crowned Africa Under-15 Badminton champion in Uganda.
At the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games in Scotland, Zambia won two bronze medals through judoka Boas Munyonga and boxer Ben Muziyo.
Epah Tembo-Jere became the first female Zambian to attain the Woman International Master norm in chess.
The netballers also qualified for the first time to the World Championship to be hosted in New Zealand next year.
On the football field, Football House recorded an unprecedented success with all national teams (both men and women) entered in various competitions qualifying to the world and continental championships.
The women under-17 team made history by qualifying to the FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup finals which were staged in Costa Rica.
However, the Albert Kachinga-coached team bowed out in the preliminaries after losing twice despite beating hosts, Costa Rica in the final group match.
The women senior team (She-polopolo) captain by Mupopo also qualified for the first time to the African Women Championship where the Zambian lasses could not progress to the knock out stage.
For the men, all the age-group teams (Under-17, 20 and senior) made it to their respective African championships.
The Under-17 will for the first time compete at the Africa Junior Championship which will be staged in Niger next year while the Under-20 will participate for the umpteenth time at the African Youth Championship.
The senior team (Chipolopolo) also traditionally qualified to the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
It is also worth noting that the Under-20 team won the 2014 COSAFA Youth Championship held in Zimbabwe recently during the rechristened African Union Sports Commission (AUSC) Region Five Youth Games.
In total, Zambia won 27 medals at the AUSC Region Five Games.
Despite these success stories, there were also some poor showing by other disciplines including Zambia staging a sham of the Zone Six Karate Championships where local karatekas performed badly.
The karatekas, whose leaders were involved in wrangles, also failed to send representation to the World Championships in Japan.
The Zambia Tennis Association (ZTA) also failed to stage the 2014 Zambia Open Championship after failing to secure sponsorship.
ZTA could also not send a team to the Davis Cup due to a chocking debt the association owes the International Tennis Federation and Confederation of African Tennis in annual subscription fees.
This year is also ending in style with the Zambia Amateur Athletics Association embroiled in a bitter power struggle which has forced the postponement of its elective annual general meeting.
I am sure many Zambians would like to hear more good results than wrangles come 2015. For comments email:malungaf@gmail.com
