Namibia Street Classic to make history 

The Namibia Street Classic (NSC) which will feature an array of international athletics stars in Windhoek on 27 and 28 March was officially launched yesterday.

Even organiser Henk Botha said the event will cost about N$5 million to stage  and outlined a bold vision, rooted in a belief that Namibia can compete with the best in the world. 

“There’s a lot of people behind the scenes, friends, family and colleagues that worked hard to make this possible, so its very important for me to state that this isn’t the Henk Botha show – this is the Namibian show, this is for the people of Namibia,” he said.

“I’ve got this thing, since my rugby days, one of the most beautiful things for me whenever I captained the team, I would say we are from the land of the brave, but I think sometimes we tend not to believe that. We say that, but we don’t believe it, and if you look at how successful Jamica is with a population that is smaller than ours, then that tells us that we can be big, we can be just as good as our neighbours. Ive even got this joke about the South Africans –  we tend to look up to South Africa but I don’t know why because they are below us,” he said. 

The NSC will be a World Athletics Category C ranked event which ranks below gold, silver and Diamond League events, but Botha said it ranked highly in Africa.

“It might sound that much, but I can assure you that we haven’t seen a C category in South Africa for almost five, six years. They haven’t hosted one, they have a lot of events but not one was a C. All of them are F and I know Botswana had a gold event, but it’s downgraded and Kenya had a gold event, and then we have one in Morocco which is a Diamond League. That’s it for Africa and if you take into consideration that Europe has 460 ranked events where we can only mention five, which means that athletes need to travel to Europe, so why do we do that to ourselves? 

“Why don’t we host events like this? Why don’t we sit down and say to ourselves we can do this and this is why we are here today, we are here to tell you that we as Namibians, we are strong enough, we are good enough and we’re going to grow as athletes.

“We have the secretary general of Athletics Namibia here, Madeleine Kotze and the vision that she has put together with the team for athletics in Namibia is a vision to grow and to become a stronghold within our country and at international level,” he added. 

Venue changed 

Botha said the initial idea was to host the event in Robert Mugabe Avenue next to the Independence Memorial Museum but that was not possible anymore. 

“Unfortunately due to technical things we were not able to put the track on the road itself because the municipalitiy said the impact on the traffic will be too much, to close it for one week and thats what we need to erect the track. 

So therefore we are moving everything to Vegkop at Windhoek High School, and we are still going to build the track there, and now we will have a bit more spectators and we can now also get a lot of people closer to the track and that was the main purpose,” he said. 

Besides the events at Vegkop, there will also be a street mile in Windhoek’s Independence Avenue, while Botha said it will make history on the continent. 

“This will be the first time in Africa that we will host a street event. This will be the biggest sports event that I can think of thats ever been hosted in Namibia as talent is concerned and I can compare because we are looking at world-class sportsmen and sports women,” he said, adding that Namibia will receive a lot of international exposure. 

“We will advertise our country as a sports tourism facility and we will also advertise our country as a tourism hub. We know that our biggest income in this country is tourism and therefore we will also have a lot of exposure in the media. We have already got confirmation that SuperSport will do a live broadcast, and there will be live broadcasts on all world athletics platforms, so even if you are in the smallest little town, you will be able to see the Namibian Classic and it will be available all over the world,” he said. 

Botha named a star-studded list of athletes that will be in action from all over the world, as well as some of Namibia’s top athletes who will have an opportunity to compete against the world’s best. 

They include sprinter Gilbert Hainuca, long jumper Lionel Coetzee, the exciting young shot-putter Marike Weitz, as well as star sprinter Christine Mboma, although Botha added that Beatrice Masilingi will not be competing.

“Christine Mboma will be running at this event  –  she’s preparing very hard now and she is very active. Unfortunately Beatrice will not compete because there’s still some stuff that we need to sort out, but as far as Christine Mboma is concerned, Namibians can come and see her, she’ll be running”

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