Badminton: Uganda International Tourney Climaxes, Team Uganda Wins Nine Medals
The 2021 edition of Uganda International Badminton tournament successfully climaxed on Sunday at Lugogo Indoor Arena.
Though they did not win in Singles for both men and women, Team Uganda displayed an amazing performance and won at least nine medals from different categories.
Uganda’s seed one, Brian Kasirye won a gold medal in mixed doubles with Husina Kobugabe after beating fellow Ugandans, Ismael Wanagalya and Betty Apio by two sets straight 21-13, 22-20.
Husina Kobugabe reaped big in this year’s tourney, gathered two gold medals, the one from mixed doubles and one from Women doubles where she paired Mable Namakoye to beat their counterparts, Tracy Naluwooza and Fadila Shamika Mohamed. They defeated the latter two sets straight, 21-09, 21-17.
After winning the gold medal and garnering 2500 points that help her qualify to 2022 Commonwealth games to be held in Birmingham England, Mable Namakoye revealed why her and the partner Husina Kobugabe managed to win.
“What enabled us to win the women doubles, we have been training together, correcting our mistakes, that has helped us to win and we are not going to seize, we going to have a training camp at least for a month because we have All Africa games ahead, so we have to keep ourselves fit and ready.” Mable spoke to media at Lugogo.
Ugandans who won medals include, Kasirye Brian (Gold Medal in mixed doubles), Husina Kobugabe (two gold medals in Mixed and Women doubles), Tracy Naluwooza, Fadila Shamika Mohamed, Ismael Wanagalya and Betty Apio each won silver medals.
The tournament organizer and Uganda Badminton Association CEO, Simon Mugabi said a tournament that attracted over 90 participants from eight countries has been a success especially to team Uganda as he explains.
“The tournament started very well on Thursday and it has been a successful event, the performance was very good especially to team Uganda, our players managed to accumulate points that can take them to Commonwealth, in singles,they reached at quarterfinal, which means each got 1000 points each.
When we went to doubles, our players reached on finals playing each other, the winners garnered 2500 points, basically it has been a good tournament for us” Mugabi explained.
In Men Singles, Indian International, Varun Kapur on final beat fellow Indian, Sunkar Muthusamy Subramanian, defeated him by 2-1 (21-18,16-21,21-17) while in Women singles Malvika Bansod india defeated Anupama Upadhyaya by 2-1,(17-21,25-23,21-10).