CHRISTINE Mboma won Namibia's fourth bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham on Saturday night, while cyclist Vera Looser narrowly missed out on a fifth after coming fourth in the women's road race yesterday.
In the women's 200m final on Saturday, Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica had a great start and went flying into the home straight well ahead of the rest of the pack, while Mboma was lying fourth behind Favour Ofili of Nigeria and another Jamaican, Nathallia Whyte.
Mboma, however, passed Whyte with about 100m to go to move third, but she could not close the gap on the front two, as Thompson-Herah went on to take gold in a new Commonwealth Games record of 22,02 seconds, while Ofili won silver in 22,51 and Mboma bronze in 22,80.
After the race Mboma said she was happy with the bronze.
"It's a great achievement - although I just got a bronze medal, I'm really happy with that. I only trained for one week and winning a bronze medal is a great thing for me.
"Although some people might say I lost, I'm happy. It took me two months without training and then I only prepared for a week before coming here" she added.
Mboma said she wanted to represent her country at the Commonwealth Games.
"At first I refused to come to the Commonwealth Games, but when I started training I told my coach, maybe I should just try to go to the Commonwealth Games for the love of my country, to represent my country here, and to see how far I can go with my injury.
"When I was training I was feeling better, but when I came here, I still had that fear that I will injure myself again and maybe if I try to push hard the injury will come back, but I can see the injury is doing better, and I'm really happy with my bronze medal," she said.
"Last year I had a great season, I won some competitions before I got injured, but then when I got injured I was going through a lot, a lot of things were happening and then my injury. But after two months I decided to just come here and to see how far my injury is and I'm really happy to run at the Commonwealth Games," she added.
In yesterday's women's cycling road race over 107km Looser gave a great performance to narrowly miss out on a medal.
She remained with the leading pack throughout the race and in the final sprint to the line finished fourth, behind the gold medallist, Giorgia Baker of Australia, the silver medallist Neah Evans of Scotland and the bronze medallist Sarah Roy of Australia.
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The top 24 riders all finished in the same time of 2:44:46. Looser's team mate Anri Krugel, however, was pulled off before the end.
On Thursday night, Ananias Shikongo won bronze in the men's 100m T11/T12 final in a new personal best time of 10,95, while Ndodomzi Ntutu of South Africa won gold in 10,83 seconds, and Zachary Shaw of England silver in 10,90.
What made his performance even better was the fact that he was the only T11 athlete running with a guide against T12 athletes, a fact that he underlined after the race.
"I really feel happy. When you hear Ananias Shikongo is a troublemaker on the track I had to give them some trouble. The T12 athletes are on their own but you can see in the final I was the only T11, so I just did my best with my guide to try and get a medal.
It was the first time that Shikongo had gone below 11 seconds and his guide Even Tjiviju said they would aim to go faster now.
"That was an extra mile because we had to push. Before the race I was telling Ananias at least we have to run a 10,9 to win this race otherwise if we run 11 seconds you cannot go far. Now we just need to go back home and push and put in some more effort with our coach Letu Hamhola so that we can at least come close to times like 10,7 and 10,6 he said.
Namibia's two wrestlers Jason Afrikaner and Romio Goliat also bowed out of the wrestling competition over the weekend.
On Friday, Afrikaner lost 7-0 to George Ramm of England in the men's freestyle 65kg quarterfinal, while Goliath lost 10-0 to Ali Asad of Pakistan in the men's freestyle 57kg quarterfinal on Saturday.
