TOC secretary general, Filbert Bayi

Two officials from the Tanzania Olympic Committee (TOC) are expected to attend two extra ordinary meetings of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) to be held in London later this month.

TOC secretary general Filbert Bayi and president Gulam Rashid  are the Tanzania officials lined up to represent the country at the meetings.

 Some of the agendas to be discussed during the meetings include Olympic development in all 53 ANOCA members.

Other agendas include the global development of the Games and eligibility of United States of American (USA) based Anita de Frantz who wants to join IOC as executive board member.

“We are expecting to board the flight to Heathrow on July 25 in readiness to attend the two extraordinary meetings (ANOCA and IOC). The two meetings are of great importance to our country as we will discuss on many issues related to development of Olympics in Africa and the world in general,” he said
 The TOC official duo would remain in London after the meetings to follow through the progress of the Tanzanian athletes.

Bayi said they will be joined by the minister for Information, Culture, Youth and Sports, Fenella Mukangara. The departure date of the minister is still unknown.

Tanzania Olympic squad that includes four athletes, a swimmer and a boxer has already arrived in London since last Sunday for a three-week training stint at Bradford University ahead of the Games.

Should the two IOC officials and the minister join the Tanzania squad in London as scheduled, then the total number of the members of the contingent would sum up to 14.
More than half of the squad will be officials as only six athletes will be competing during the Games.

The Tanzania team has an uphill task of breaking the 32-year old voodoo of missing Olympic medal despite frequent and consistent participation since the Moscow Olympics.

Poor preparations have always been the song whenever athletes flop at the Games and this time lack of timely bursary seems to be one of the reasons most likely to surface should none of the competitors fail to win a medal.

The last time the team competed in Olympics was during the 2008 staged in Beijing and as usual they came back home empty handed albeit a bag of excuses.

Meanwhile, Tanzania Olympic squad’s chief de mission Hassan Jarufu, in a telephone interview, said the country athletes had a feel of the Bradford facilities yesterday morning and evening and said all the athletes liked the place.