{"id":36365,"date":"2016-11-28T10:50:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T08:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=36365"},"modified":"2016-11-28T10:50:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T08:50:43","slug":"podium-performance-programme-athletes-given-hearty-send-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2016\/11\/28\/podium-performance-programme-athletes-given-hearty-send-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Podium Performance Programme athletes given hearty send-off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A <\/strong>delegation of 53 people, including 38 athletes, received a hearty send-off ahead of the Region Five Games set for Luanda, Angola next month.<\/p>\n<p>The team is expected to leave for Angola on December 6 to battle with athletes from nine countries.<\/p>\n<p>During the farewell party at College of Medicine (CoM) Sports Complex on Friday evening, Under-20 athletes drawn from athletics, judo, paralympics, lawn tennis and boxing were treated to a dinner and motivational speeches.<\/p>\n<p>The athletes have, for 18 months, been training at CoM\u2019s High Performance Centre (HPC) following the recently adopted Podium Performance Programme (PPP).<\/p>\n<p>Africa Union Sports Council (AUSC) initiated PPP to improve athletes\u2019 performance during major competitions.<\/p>\n<p>Malawi National Council of Sports, as the AUSC\u2019s member, joined forces with HPC to train the athletes systematically and scientifically under close supervision.<\/p>\n<p>HPC Director, Augustine Banda, said they had no doubts that the athletes would impress during the bi-annual developmental games.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have done our part and now it is up to them. Regardless of the results, we have told them to give out their best. We feel that the programme would help us achieve our goals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Banda also hailed key partner s in the project, including Old Mutual and GPY for assisting the camp training.<\/p>\n<p>Sports Council Executive Secretary, George Jana, said they expect Team Malawi to win medals in Angola.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are hoping that that they will do better than last time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s vice Captain, Cecilia Mhango, said they were ready to compete on the international stage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not frightened by the task ahead. We are going there to represent our country and we want to bring home medals on return,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A delegation of 53 people, including 38 athletes, received a hearty send-off ahead of the Region Five Games set for Luanda, Angola next month. The team is expected to leave for Angola on December 6 to battle with athletes from nine countries. During the farewell party at College of Medicine (CoM) Sports Complex on Friday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":36367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36368,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36365\/revisions\/36368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}