A seven-man delegation from the Association of Uganda University Sports (AUUS) left for Portugal on Wednesday confident that they will return with medals from the FISU Aveiro 2022 World University Cross Country Championships in Portugal, on March 12.

They hope to draw inspiration from Uganda athletes’ immediate past on the international scene to win medals for the country.

Athletes Emmanuel Otim, Brian Wangwe, and Sam Cheptegei from Makerere University, as well as Dismas Yeko and Knight Aciro from Ndejje University together with their Coach Faustin Kiwa from Bugema and team manager Brian Nsubuga make the team for the games that were earlier postponed owing to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The only lady on the team Aciro who will compete as an individual has set herself a target of running under 35 minutes, which she hopes will win her a medal.

“I’m very determined to win a medal because I have been performing well in the national cross country events, so I have that hope that I will come back with something. I also have high hopes in the whole team and I know we shall make it,” Aciro who ran 35.51 in the 10km national cross country run last month vowed.

Team Captain Otim also exuded confidence saying: “We have been involved in various training, and hard work always pays. We have been eagerly waiting for the event to happen since last year and we are a strong team but we have to invoke the lord because he has the final say.

“Uganda has been winning things on the world scene and we are drawing inspiration from that and I believe we shall win something; we are in good shape,” Otim whose best time is 31:45 stated.

Yeko, who won the 8km junior men’s race last month in 22.16 is confident of grabbing gold because of the ‘training and good preparations we have had,”

Wangwe who made 24 minutes in the national cross country promised to perform to his best while Cheptegei said they will be good ambassadors in an event that will be held on a new course. Coach Kiwa said he expects individual and team medals from his ‘steady’ group and his prayer was none of them falls sick before the event.

“We need to aim for the individual medals first, but the rest have to be close to the medalists if we are to win a team medal because the team medal is determined by the aggregate of positions of arrival, so if we shall keep as close we can,” Kiwa noted.

AUUS president Penninah Kabenge who flagged off the team alongside General Secretary Patrick Ssebuliba advised the athletes to mentally prepare and acclimatize for the cold conditions that they will encounter.

“They have trained hard and I’m very confident they are ready to tackle the World. We have been perennial participants in this event and we won all categories when we hosted the event in Entebbe in 2014, so we have the capacity because we have an experienced team which has received all the basic needs,” Kabenge stated.

Ssebuliba said they had picked on quality athletes that have been active and were identified from competitions held before and after the lockdown.