Malawi Olympic Committee (MOC) is earmarking seven sporting disciplines for the 2026 Commonwealth Games’ qualifiers.
The Games will be held in Glasgow, Scotland, next year, but the qualifiers begin this year.
MOC director general Naomi Chinatu said in an interview that the targeted codes are judo, boxing, swimming, netball, parasport, weightlifting and cycling.
She said MOC has already submitted a K635 million budget to cater for the qualifiers.
“They have to qualify first because failure to qualify means we cannot compete. And we believe national sports associations have already started preparations as that is their responsibility,” she said.
to qualify. | Nation
Chinatu said they are earmarking associations with the potential to qualify.
Some of the sports disciplines that have been excluded are wrestling, squash, hockey, badminton, cricket and shooting.
Table tennis, squash and triathlon have been left out of consideration for the qualifiers.
The total number of events at the Games will be nine fewer compared to the 2022 Birmingham edition.
Squash Malawi president David Ng’onamo expressed disappointment at the exclusion of the sport.
“We are very disappointed because it is a dream of every athlete to represent their country at major games like these. Malawi Squash has not been part of these games for a while and we were hoping to send some athletes to next year’s event,” he said.
Table Tennis Association has also expressed disappointment with the Commonwealth Games Federation for their exclusion.
The association’s president William Nyirenda said: “This is a very big setback in terms of development of table tennis in the country. Our athletes and their coaches continue to be deprived of the much-needed exposure and this heavily derails technical development of table tennis in the country.
“From our end, we are not even consulted on the reasons why our sport continues to be sidelined in such important programs. We strongly feel that selection of sporting disciplines to be represented for such high level international competitions is far from being considered merit based.
“This is so because we are able to see that the sporting standards for some of the disciplines selected are lower than table tennis.”
The Commonwealth Games are one of the major sporting events in the world.
