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Cameroon: Athletes Brace Up to Defend Nation in Beijing
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Cameroon Tribune (Yaoundé)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Fred Vubem
With barely 87 days to go to the beginning of the 24th edition of the Olympic Games in China, the exact size of the Cameroonian delegation to the Games is not yet known. This is because the qualifiers are still going for some disciplines such as athletics, boxing, judo, basketball and weight lifting.
In football, the Olympic Lions qualified in flying colours raising expectation that they are going to repeat the exploit of the elder brothers in year 2000. Besides football, Cameroon's hope for a medal in the games is in athletics. With the comeback of the 2004 triple jump gold Olympic gold medallist, Francoise Mbango, who recently won gold in the African championship in Ethiopia. Joseph Batadong also obtained the minimum to qualify for the games in Addis Ababa. Meanwhile athletes like Mani Leonie, Bertille Atangana, Carole Kaboud and Georgina Toth are still running after their qualification for the games. They have up to the 23rd of July to obtain the minimum required. It is worthy to mention that Georgina Toth, is a Hungarian student in the USA, who decided to compete for Cameroon during the African championship in Ethiopia.
In judo, there are five Cameroonian athletes currently taking part in the African championship in Agadir-Morrocco. The competition which began yesterday will end on May 18 and only then will it be known whether Moussima Ewane, Christelle Okodombe, Dieudonné Dolassem, Mballa Felicité and Tadjifor Chifor Alexis, would have won their places in the 100kg, 78kg, 90kg, 70kg and 66kg competitions.
The basketball team is equally going to take part in a qualification tournament in Greece. The same for the weight lifting team which will also take part in a tournament in South Africa to pick her qualification ticket for the Beijing Games.
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Cameroon's most spectacular performance was during the Olympic Games in Sidney when they won the most prestigious medal in the competition that is the gold medal in football. Four years later Françoise Mbango was to make the Cameroonian flag fly high in the sky when she won the gold medal in triple jump. Other victories in the games were fetched by boxers such as Joseph Bessala, who won the silver medal during the Olympic games in Mexico in 1968 and Ndongo Ebanga, who won the bronze medal in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1984. The question now is, will Cameroon be able to improve on its performance in the games? It is just a question of wait and see as only time will tell.
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