Namibian Sport in 2025 – The good, the bad and the ugly 

Namibian sport witnessed some remarkable highs and agonising lows during 2025, as well as some embarrassing blunders at the year-end sport awards.

The single most outstanding performance of the year belonged to cyclist Roger Suren who won a silver medal in the junior men’s cross-country event at the UCI MTB World Championships in Valais, Switzerland on 12 September – three days before his 18th birthday. 

By so doing he not only became the first Namibian to win a medal at the UCI World Championships, but he also became the first African cyclist to win a medal in the junior men’s category.

Suren put Africa on the map with a brilliant ride that saw him finishing 11 seconds behind the winner, Lucas Teste of France. 

Despite this stellar performance at the highest level of international sport, he was snubbed at the Namibia National Sport Awards, when he failed to win the junior sportsman of the year award. 

Suren, however, was unperturbed, and the day after the sport awards, underlined his growing reputation and versatility when he won the bronze medal in the junior men’s road race at the African Road Cycling Championships in Kwale, Kenya.

Vera Looser also excelled internationally, making her mark amongst the world’s best marathon MTB riders.

In February she came fourth overall with her South African partner Sarah Hill at the international Tankwa Trek MTB stage race in the Cape province, and the following month came second at the 800km eight-day stage race, the Absa Cape Epic with an American partner Alexis Skarda. 

From May to July, Looser competed in the HERO UCI cross-country Marathon World Cup series, where she secured four top 10 finishes, including  a third place in Andorra, for an overall series ranking of seventh. 

In June, she excelled at the Africa Continental MTB Marathon Championships in Pietermaritzburg, finishing more than 10 minutes ahead of Hayley Preen of South Africa to be crowned the African champion; and two months later she once again teamed up with Skarda to win the Swiss Epic.

Namibian cycling made further international strides, when it hosted a first-ever UCI-accredited African women’s tour at the Tour de Windhoek, with about 50 cyclists from seven African nations in action. 

Eagles soar high 

Namibian Cricket had a great year, with the Eagles qualifying for a fourth successive T20 World Cup, under the inspiring leadership of captain Gerhard Erasmus and newly appointed head coach Craig Williams, who took over from Pierre de Bruyn in May. 

Erasmus excelled, establishing himself as one of the world’s leading all-rounders, ranking 13th in the world in One Day International (ODI) cricket and 18th in the world in T20 cricket.

But the standout cricketer of the year was spin bowler Bernard Scholtz, who ended the year with the second most ODI wickets in the world – a truly remarkable statistic for a player from an associate nation.

The most enduring memory of 2025, however, was Namibia’s brilliant four-wicket victory against South Africa on a historic day in October when the world-class FNB Namibia Cricket Stadium was inaugurated with a packed crowd of more than 4 000 people in attendance. 

Hockey reaches new heights

Namibian hockey had a great year with their men and women’s teams excelling at the Indoor Hockey World Cup in Croatia in February. 

The men reached their highest ever-ranking of eighth in the world, as they qualified for the knockout stages after beating Trinidad and Tobago 6-3 and drawing 5-5 against Australia.

In the last eight play-off matches they lost 7-6 to Belgium, 4-3 to Australia, and 5-4 to Iran to finish eighth overall.

Namibia’s women even surpassed that as they finished sixth at the world cup, while their international ranking improved four places to eighth in the world. 

In the group stages, they beat Australia 3-2 and New Zealand 7-0, while losing 8-1 to Germany and 5-1 to Austria. In the knockout stages they beat Thailand 3-2 but lost 6-1 to Belgium to finish sixth overall – their best-ever performance after four appearances at the world cup. 

Namibia’s junior men and women’s field hockey teams also made history, as both qualified for the junior world cup. At the junior men’s world cup in Madurai, India, Namibia scored a historic 4-2 win against Egypt, before beating Oman by the same score to finish 23rd overall, while the women finished 24th after losing 2-1 to Zimbabwe in their final play-off match. 

Inline hockey excelled as Namibia’s senior men’s team won a bronze medal at the World Games in Chengdu, China after beating France 3-2 in the third place play-off. 

It was the first time that Namibia had won a medal at the multisport event which featured more than 4 000 athletes from over 100 countries competing in 35 non-Olympic sporting codes. 

A great year for swimming 

Namibia’s swimmers excelled internationally, led by some brilliant performances by Ronan Wantenaar.

In December last year he became Namibia’s first-ever semi-finalist at the Short Course World Championships in Budapest, finishing 16th overall in the 50m breaststroke, while at the Long Course World Championships in Singapore in July, he repeated the feat, before coming 10th overall.

In the latter event he narrowly missed out on a place in the final, while his national record time of 26.94 seconds made him the 15th fastest swimmer over the distance in the world this year, which is also the fourth fastest time ever by an African swimmer. Strangely enough, Wantenaar was not even nominated for the sportsman of the year award.

Namibia’s junior swimmers also excelled, winning the Africa Aquatics Zone IV Swimming Championships in Eswatini for the third year in a row, while coming fourth overall at the Africa Aquatics Junior Swimming Championships in Cairo, with two gold, two silver and five bronze medals. 

Oliver Durand was the standout junior swimmer, winning a host of medals and breaking countless national records along the way. 

At the Junior World Aquatic Swimming Championships in Otopeni, Romania he broke five national age group and three open records, while he achieved Namibia’s highest placing at the championships when he came 12th in the 400m individual medley. Durand was also a surprise ommission at the sport awards, and was not even a finalist for the junior sportsman of the year award.

In football, Peter Shaulile and Deon Hotto excelled in South Africa, with Shalulile breaking Siabonga Nomvethe’s long-standing PSL goalscoring record of 129 goals, taking it to 134 by mid-December, while Hotto won three trophies with Orlando Pirates – the MTN8 Cup final, the Carling Knockout Cup and the Carling Black Label Cup.

The Brave Warriors, though, missed out on a great chance to qualify for a first ever Fifa World Cup when their qualifying campaign petered out with two defeats in October.

In March they were still undefeated and just two points behind log leaders Tunisia, but subsequent defeats to Malawi, Liberia and Tunisia put them out of contention. 

Rugby’s 25-year World Cup run finally ended

While the Brave Warriors’ failure to qualify for the Fifa World Cup was maybe expected, the national rugby team’s failure to qualify for the 2027 Rugby World Cup came as quite a shock. 

The Welwitschias missed out on direct qualification when they lost 30-28 to Zimbabwe in the Africa Cup final, which saw the Sables qualifying for the first time in 34 years.

Namibia had a second chance to qualify at the intercontinental repechage tournament in Dubai, but defeats to Belgium (22-15) and Samoa (26-8) put an end to a remarkable run of seven successive world cup appearances dating back to 1999.

Despite the senior team’s failure, a spark of hope was ignited by the national u20 side, which reclaimed the Africa u20 Rugby Championship, the Barthes Cup, for the first time in seven years, after beating Zimbabwe 41-22, Kenya 32-22, and Tunisia 81-7. 

Hopefully the core of that squad will remain as Namibian rugby tries to rebuild and qualify for the 2031 World Cup. 

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