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The sky is the beginning for Thabani Mathe, a 24-year-old Badminton athlete who is raising Zimbabwe’s flag high locally and on the international scene.
Spiked Online Media caught up with Thabani, a first Seed for the Zimbabwe National Badminton Team in all the 3 categories. He shared with us his journey in the sport.
“I field in being Men’s Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and my number one focus is on the Men’s Singles for the past 5 years. With that, I have competed in and won various tournaments, both internationally and regionally.
“At the International level, my accolades include 2 All Africa Junior Championship Bronze Medals (attained in 2015 and 2016 in Mauritius and South Africa respectively) and 4 Zimbabwe Open Championship Gold Medals. At the Club level, I have 6 Sunrise Badminton Open Championship Gold Medals and 5 Eagle Wings Badminton Championship Gold Medals,” he said.
The athlete’s short term goals at the moment include:
• Training in a badminton confined environment/nation, in which the “best of the best” in the World sharpen their skills regularly in turn making them the most dominant in the sport (India, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Denmark, etc). Further increasing both my experience and accolades on the world stage;
• Qualifying for next year’s top tournaments like the All Africa Senior Championships (which I have made thrice so far), the BWF World Championships, and the World Super Series Finals to mention but a few, and finally and most importantly;
• Cracking the world’s top 100 rankings by the end of next year, in turn making me eligible to compete in the Paris 2024 Olympic games.
“All the above goals, hopes, and self-expectations are what I’ve been driving myself to achieve in the past 8 years. It has been a bumpy ride given the COVID-19 pandemic which drifted me off course from ticking the remaining targets on that list mentioned. The timing surely could have been worse, as my name was staring down the top 250 badminton players worldwide at the time.
“The number one requirement I have at the moment is that of funding in the form of either sponsorship(s), endorsement(s), and/or general financial support on this quest – a quest I’m most certain can accomplish and strike gold (pun intended) and truly believe that with influential people to help me attain those targets, I can definitely do no wrong,” Thabani added.