Namibia’s track and field athlete, Chenault Lionel Coetzee, states that participating in the recently concluded World Athletics Championship was a dream fulfilled and an opportunity he will never forget.

The 2023 World Athletics Championships took place in Budapest, Hungary, from 19 to 27 August, with Team Namibia being represented by two marathon runners and by Coetzee in the track and field event.

In a recent interview, Coetzee told Nampa that the competition was significant and well-organised.

“I enjoyed my experience; I did not make the final, but I gave my best. The only thing that affected me was the wind, but we will go back to the drawing board and take it from there,” he said.

He mentioned that competing alone in track and field feels solitary, and he hopes to see other athletes qualify for championships to have training partners during such competitions.

On the fifth day of the championships, Coetzee was placed 16th in the long jump elimination event. The holder of the national long jump record, with a distance of 8.27 metres, only jumped 7.55 metres on that day.

Belinda Oberholster, Coetzee’s coach, told Nampa on Saturday that this was his first major competition. He learned a lot from this experience and will use it to improve in future competitions.

“We had a starting list of stars and some of them also failed to progress to the final, but we took this as a learning curve. We are going back to the drawing board to improve on ourselves, and I am hopeful that at the next championship, he will be able to jump a better distance,” she said.

The 8.27-metre Namibian national record set by Coetzee on 15 April 2023 at the Independence Stadium is the World Athletics Council-approved entry standard for the 2024 Olympics in the men’s long jump category.

The Namibian athlete needed to jump the same distance once again at the World Champs to automatically qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics, as all performances for those qualifying for the Olympics must occur during competitions organised or authorised by World Athletics, its area associations, or its national federations in accordance with its rules published on the World Athletics Global Calendar.

- Nampa