Beach volleyball: Mulinge calls for nullification of Olympics qualifiers
Volleyball and Handball
By
Ernest Ndunda
| Apr 09, 2020
National women beach volleyball team coach Sammy Mulinge has urged the African Volleyball Confederation to rescind its decision of locking out teams that did not honour the Africa beach volleyball phase two Olympic qualifiers last month.
Kenya Volleyball Federation has threatened to take their case to the International Olympic Committee should the continental body fail to nullify the results.
Mulinge said the Africa beach volleyball body should take the best team to the Olympic Games and this can happen if there is fair participation in the qualifiers.
“All the teams were well prepared and it will be unfair for the continental body to maintain its earlier stand on the qualifiers. Other bodies have nullified most of the qualifiers for fair treatment and beach volleyball should not be exceptional,” said Mulinge yesterday in Mombasa.
“It was not our wish not to travel for the qualifiers and CAVB must consider this. I hope the body will ensure that there is a level playing field for all the nations that had qualified for the second round,” he said.
Most nations including Kenya in both women and men teams did not participate in the two qualifiers because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kenya Volleyball Federation president Waithaka Kioni wrote to the African body asking them to consider and call off the previous results and have new dates set up as all the countries had prepared for the qualifiers but could not travel due to virus outbreak.
Kenyan women were to travel to Nigeria for the qualifiers against the hosts Nigeria, Zambia, DRC Congo and Cape Verde while the men team was to travel to Gambia to play South Sudan, Botswana, Mauritius and the host Gambia.
However, due to the outbreak of the global pandemic, only Nigeria and Zambia took part and automatically both teams qualified for the final phase to determine the African representative in the Olympic Games.
In men category, Gambia faced South Sudan after the rest of the teams failed to travel. Both teams qualified for the final phase.
African Volleyball Confederation president Amr Elwani said they had put on hold the remaining five qualifiers, but the outcome of three that had already been played would remain.