Team Ghana has left the shores of the country for Gold Coast, Australia on Monday afternoon to continue with preparations for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
A short ceremony was held for Team Ghana as they departed for Gold Coast for their last phase of the preparation.
According to Mr. Pius Enam Hadzide, Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, the pre-event camping was part of the preparation put together by the International Games Committee (IGC) to ensure that “Team Ghana” performs creditably well.
He said per the IGC’s program, all the disciplines were supposed to go through a three phase training program to ensure their readiness for the Games, adding that traveling to the tournament venue to acclamatise was the final phase of the preparations.
“That Committee has put together a three phase training program. The first one was local non-residential camping, which was successfully done, the second phase which was residential local camping was also successfully done. We are now moving to the third phase of preparation which is the pre-game camping outside of Ghana.
“And so today the first batch of team Ghana will depart, for programme camping from now until the beginning of April when the game starts,” he said.
“We deem this important because we want our athletes to acclimatise to all conditions whether dietary or even the facilities that are going to be used. Even though this has come at great cost to the ministry of Youth and Sports and to the nation Ghana, we believe that it is for the best.”
He said the target for Team Ghana at the Games is to bring home at least five medals (three more better than the last edition in Glasgow).
“We are confident that we can improve on our performance at the last commonwealth games in Glasgow were Ghana won two medals. We are anticipating to win a minimum of five medals. Our athletes and coaches have assured us that they would work hard to achieve this modest expectation of ours.”
“Our Operation is entitled ‘from Gold Coast to Gold Coast for gold’, we say this because we are confident that the athletes are ready, committed and have been trained well by the coaches.”
Mr Hadzide wished the Team well and promised them of total government support.
GNA
