ZIMBABWE’S kickboxing team booked their place at this year’s World Championships to be held between November and December in Turkey after Brighton Tangata and Terence Munemo finished in the top three at the Libreville International Championships held in Gabon recently. The Libreville tournament was hosted by Gabon and was used as a qualifier for the World Championships scheduled for November 30 to December 8 in Turkey, and national champion, Tangata, battled it out in the lightweight division and finished on first position while his teammate Munemo settled for third place in the middleweight category to progress to the global event. The tournament featured kickboxers from countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Guinea, Congo Brazzaville, Iran, Italy and Turkey Zimbabwe Kickboxing Association president, Tony Kamangira, was impressed with the team’s overall performance and said they are now setting their eyes on the World Championships. “It was a good tournament and was used as a qualifier for the World Championships. They did well with Brighton coming first and Terence finishing third which saw us qualifying for the world event. “We are now going to have a tournament every month as part of our preparations for the World Championships so that we keep our fighters in shape. We are also going to participate in other international events if funds permits. “We need to concentrate on weight and endurance because we had some problems in Gabon because Brighton was overweight and had to trim down his weight in a short space of time so we want to avoid that. We learnt quite a lot from this competition, our fighters need to maintain their weight,” said Kamangira. Tangata said there is need for all the stakeholders to invest in the sport if the country is to match international standards as most of the participants at the tournament were professionals who are into kickboxing on a full-time basis. *gdn*
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:39:41 +0000
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