Solo athlete aims to impress

By PATRICIA KEAMO

WEST Sepik’s Wutung community have sponsored a lone male athlete to compete in the PNG Air National Athletics Championship starting tomorrow at the Sir John Guise Stadium.
Bobby Tanfa from Wutung has been competing in local competitions back home and will be making his debut in the national championship in the sprint and middle distance events.
Tanfa’s coach Amos Ali, a former national representative, said the 17-year-old has been competing since he was seven and aims to represent the country.
“He started running in the 10km fun run annually and as years go by, he kept competing in the annual inter-sports carnival with schools in West Sepik and Jayapura,” Ali said.
“We were supposed to attend previous championships but due to financial difficulties we couldn’t travel until now.
“We did our own fundraising to meet the cost of coming here. We had support from people in the village with funds.”
“It took a lot of sacrifices especially when there’s trials (and competition at Jayapura). Finances for transportation and pocket money were some of the challenges we faced in this journey, we spent our own money to support his journey till now,” the former track medalist said.
He said they met their own travel costs to attend the championship.
“We didn’t have anyone backing us apart from the fundraising we did and support from our people in Wutung.
“We were supposed to bring five athletes but we didn’t have the funds to bring all of them here.”
Ali said Tanfa’s participation in the nationals would be a morale booster to all the young athletes in Wutung.
Tanfa, who will be competing in the 400m, 800m and 1,500m races, said he aims to one-day wear the national colours and represent the country.
“I want to be like my coach Amos Ali and be part of Team PNG. My coach Amos is my role, there’s no one I look up to apart from him. I aim to follow his footstep.”