Uganda Olympic Committee targeting 30 athletes for Rio

KAMPALA. Some Shs1.9b is what Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) spent on different activities in 2015.
Knowing that little money trickles into the sports relative to other sectors in Uganda, that figure still raised some eye brows albeit the detailed accountability.
But for UOC, spending that amount was to lay a firm foundation for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“Come Rio, we want to perform better than we did at the London Olympics,” UOC President William Blick told Daily Monitor. Of course, that comes with throwing a bigger net into the waters. Three years ago, Uganda sent just 16 athletes to London and that yielded marathon gold from Stephen Kiprotich.
Blick now wants the numbers to double. “We have done and are still doing lots of ground work,” he said, “And I will be very happy if we have about 24-30 athletes qualify for Rio and win more medals.”

Speaking of numbers, eight athletes have already qualified for Rio with the likes of Africa badminton number one Edwin Ekiring nearing the qualification mark.
Is it a realistic target though? Uganda has managed to take 20 or more athletes to the Olympics just thrice in 14 editions.

Biggest ever contingent
A contingent of 33, which notably had a team for hockey, was sent to the 1972 Games in Munich, Germany and remains the biggest ever.
The country had 26 representatives at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles while 25 were in South Korea’s capital Seoul four years later.
In other editions, numbers have been meagre which obviously dims the medal target scope, something that explains why Uganda has only a total seven medals since 1956 Melbourne.
Olympic giants USA sent 530 athletes to London and their dividends were 103 medals, 46 of them gold.
However, good results come after neat preparations. From the International Olympic Committee grants and sponsorships, UOC needs about $158,000 (Shs531m) to fully facilitate the trip to Brazil.

It includes kit from Puma (Shs250m), funding athletes to international events, medical insurance and sensitisation, transport and food a day (Shs50000 per athlete) and a grand nationwide campaign dubbed ‘Let’s Go Uganda 2016’. “We have a good part of that money so far,” Blick said. “We want to raise most of it by ourselves. We do not want to have shortfalls like has been happening in the past
“At the moment, sponsors are just doing us (sport) a favour by giving us money.

But by winning medals, we want people to know that if you put money in sports, you can get good returns,” Blick reiterated.
“If they can see light at the end of the tunnel (medals on table), they will put in more money at the grass-root levels which triggers more investment into sport.”

dkyeyune@ug.nationmedia.com