2024 Paris Olympics: 3 sportspersons from Seychelles selected
Sport |Author: Sedrick Nicette Edited By: Betymie Bonnelame | July 9, 2024, Tuesday @ 13:38| 4291 views
Simon Bachmann will represent Seychelles in the swimming competition. (Seychelles Nation)
(Seychelles News Agency) - Three athletes will represent Seychelles at the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games in Paris scheduled for July 26 to August 11, a top government official said on Tuesday.
The announcement was made by the Minister responsible for Sports, Marie-Celine Zialor, when answering a private notice question (PNQ) from the Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Sebastien Pillay.
"Our athletes this year received invitations to compete, or as we call it, wild cards, and according to the National Olympic Committee, there are three. Two in swimming and one in athletics, and when we spoke to them yesterday (Monday), they were still awaiting invitees for two other athletes, one in judo and the other in canoeing," said Zialor.
In the swimming competition, Seychelles will be represented by Simon Bachmann, and Khema Elizabeth and Dylan Sicobo will compete in athletics.
For the Paris Olympics, no Seychellois athletes qualified, while for the last 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, two athletes booked their place, sailor Rodney Govinden and swimmer Passon.
According to the Seychelles Aquatics Federation (SAF) in a recent press conference said that Passon has retired from swimming.
This will be Khema's first participation at the Olympic Games while for Bachmann, this will be his second outing at the games. He competed in the 2020 games in Tokyo in 200m butterfly race.
Sprinter Sicobo will also be representing Seychelles at the Olympic Games for the first time.
To date, Seychelles has never won an Olympic medal, although boxer Roland Raforme came extremely close in the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain, where he lost in the quarter-final to Hungary's Zoltán Béres, to miss out on the semi-final and a guaranteed medal.
Four years later, Seychelles went close again, through its legendary boxing team of the time, with Rival Payet losing in the quarterfinal to Karim Tulyaganov, of Uzbekistan.
The 2024 Games in Paris will feature 329 events in 32 sports, with 10,672, split equally between male and female representation.