ROMEO Goliath gave a great performance to win a silver medal at the African Wrestling Championship in Algeria over the weekend.
Goliath narrowly missed out on the gold medal after losing 4-3 to an Algerian opponent in the final, but he has now qualified for the final Olympics qualifier which takes place next month.
According to Goliath’s coach Luis Forcelledo, Goliath gave a great performance to reach the final. In his first round match he beat a wrestler from Tunisia 8-0 and followed that up with another 8-0 victory against a Moroccan opponent.
In the semi-finals he beat an Egyptian wrestler 14-4 to book a place in the final, where he lost by a single point after a titanic battle.
“It was a very close fight and Romeo had a chance of winning it, but in the end the Algerian won 4-3,” Forcelledo said.
The 20-year-old Goliath has now qualified for the final Olympic Games qualifying tournament which will be contested by African as well as Oceanic wrestlers in Morocco next month, but Forcelledo did not want to get carried away too soon.
“We will now return to Namibia and continue our preparations for the Africa Oceania qualifier in March. I don’t want to talk about his chances of qualifying for the Olympics at the moment, because it will be very tough. He will also have to fight against wrestlers from Oceania and it’s still too early to make predictions,” he said.
Another Namibian wrestler, Alvaro Eixab also excelled at the African Championships by winning a bronze medal in the 60kg Cadet category.
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