…Sprinter Sydney Siame Zambia’s last hope for an Olympic medal
By MICHAEL MIYOBA
PRINTER Sydney Siame is Zambia’s last hope for a medal at the on-going 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games in Japan after the elimination of Rhoda Njobvu whose Olympics campaign came to an end yesterday.
Njobvu, who earlier missed out on the women’s 100 metres medal, finished fourth in Heat 4 of the women’s 200 metres race after clocking 23.33 seconds behind Aminatou Seyni, Gabrielle Thomas and Christine Mboma respectively.
Njobvu failed to beat her personal best record of 22.69 seconds and missed out on qualifying to the semifinals by 0.7s to bow out of the Olympic Games which had 30 athletes representing Zambia in women’s football, boxing, Judo, athletics and swimming.
With all the 29 athletes eliminated from the games, Siame will today seek to redeem Zambia’s poor showing when he competes in the 200 metres race.
Siame is now the only athlete with a chance to redeem the country at the Olympic Games when he takes to the tracks today.
The Zambian will be aiming to add another gold to his name after he won gold at the African Games held in Morocco in 2019.
He will be hoping to beat his personal best record of 20.29 seconds.
As the last man standing, Siame, who is generally regarded as Zambia’s biggest medal hopeful in the Olympic Games will aim to beat the 19:19 seconds world record held by retired Jamaican legend Usain Bolt.
As the reigning African Champion, Siame will come up against some of the best 200m specialists in the world like world number one-ranked Noah Lyles of the United States and Andre de Grasse of Canada, who is rated second.
Ranked 27th in 200m globally, Siame won gold at the 2014 Summer Youth Olympics in the 100m. He will also come up against 22nd-ranked Botswana’s Isaac Makwala ,who is another threat to the Zambian sole survivor.
