By MICHAEL MIYOBA
ZAMBIA national hockey teams’ dream to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic qualifiers suffered a major setback after starting the Olympic qualifiers taking place in South Africa with defeats.
The Women’s side was stunned 4-0 by Kenya who had dominated the match from the first quarter to win the Group B contest which was played at TUKS Hockey Stadium in Pretoria.
The men’s team led by coach Elvis Bwalya gave up a first half lead to lose 3-1 to Ghana, who couldn’t allow the bad weather in Pretoria to have a negative impact on their chase for the Olympic spot.
After a bad start yesterday, the men’s team will face Kenya in the second Group B game while the Golden Girls will take on Namibia today.
Meanwhile, women’s hockey team coach Floyd Chomba said the loss was unfortunate as they put up a good fight especially in the third and final quarter of the game.
Chomba said Zambia would not cry over the loss to Kenya but focus on the next match against Namibia.
“We played our first game. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a win. Like we analysed Kenya came fast and I think we took time to get into the game. The first quarter is where we lost it all but from the third quarter and the last quarter the girls really did put up a good fight so what we can do right now is obviously, we can’t cry over spilt milk, we will look forward to the next game against Namibia and that game will decide if we are still in the race or not,” Chomba said.
Only the winners in both the men’s and women’s category will qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
