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HEAVYWEIGHTS . . . Seasoned Zimbabwean sports administrator Tommy Ganda Sithole (right) meets Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, the president of the Association of National Olympic Committees, soon after he (Sithole) was elected as a member of the ANOC executive board during their General Assembly in Bangkok at the weekend

Collin Matiza Sports Editor
TOMMY Ganda Sithole, the former president of Zimbabwe Olympic Committee, has added another feather to his already colourful cap when he was elected as one of Africa’s representatives on the Association of National Olympic Committees executive board during their General Assembly which was held in Bangkok at the weekend.

The Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) is an international organisation that affiliates the current 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) recognised by the International Olympic Committee.

And Sithole was named among six African sports administrators who will be part the 26-member ANOC executive board for the next four years. The others are General Lassana Palenfo of Cote d’Ivoire, Algeria’s Mustafa Berraf, Habu Gumel of Nigeria, Lesotho’s Matlohang Moiloa-Ramoqopo and Lydia Nsekera of Burundi.

Palenfo is the long-serving president of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa and he is joined as a member of the ANOC executive board by his secretary-general Sithole of Zimbabwe who has served in various capacities in the IOC before.

Sithole and Palenfo were joined as members of the ANOC executive board by Moiloa-Ramoqopo and Nsekera who are slowly becoming two of the most powerful or influential female sports administrators in Africa.

Moiloa-Ramoqopo is currently the president of the National Olympic Committee of Lesotho. She is also the fourth vice-president of the Association of National Olympic Committee of Africa (Anoca).

Moiloa-Ramoqopo is a long serving head of the Olympic Movement in the Mountain Kingdom. She is an educationist by profession and is one of just a handful of women NOC presidents in the world.

Nsekera was the first woman in the world to be elected president of a national football federation in Burundi. She made history three years ago when she became the first woman to be elected to the Fifa Executive.

She comes with plenty of history. Four years ago she won the coveted IOC Trophy for persons who will have contributed the most to the development of women and girls in and through sport. She is also a member of the IOC. For a living, Nsekera runs her own engineering firm. Moiloa-Ramoqopo and Nsekera are now part of Africa’s representatives in ANOC where each continent is represented on the executive board by six people.

Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait is the president of ANOC.

In fact, Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah was re-elected unopposed as head of the world’s national Olympic committees.

The Kuwaiti, who also heads Asia’s top Olympic body, was the only candidate for president of the ANOC during their General Assembly in Bangkok at the weekend.

Sheikh Ahmad was elected to a two-year interim term in 2012 after longtime ANOC chief Mario Vazquez Rana of Mexico resigned amid political infighting.

The sheikh was re-elected on Friday to a four-year term through 2018. ANOC is an umbrella body representing 205 national Olympic bodies.

Sheikh Ahmad has become one of the most powerful figures in the Olympic movement. He was a key ally of Thomas Bach in his successful campaign for IOC president.

Also re-elected unopposed on Friday was Ireland’s Patrick Hickey as ANOC senior vice-president.

And Sheikh Ahmad and Hickey will head the ANOC executive board which now includes six of Africa’s most powerful sports administrators in Sithole of Zimbabwe, Cote d’Ivoire’s Palenfo, Gumel of Nigeria, Algeria’s Berraf, Moiloa-Ramoqopo of Lesotho and Burundi’s Nsekera.

Meanwhile, another African, International Association of Athletics Federations president Lamine Diack, received ANOC’s Merit Award in Bangkok at the weekend.

The other recipient of the Award on Friday was IOC president Bach.

Both men were honoured for their contributions to the work of ANOC.

Diack led the Senegal National Olympic and Sports Committee from 1985 to 2002, one of the key factors in him receiving the Award in addition to his work as IAAF president since 1999.