Bodybuilders promise better after Mombasa
Lessons. Kisekka won Bantamweight category. PHOTO | NASSER SSEMUGABI
What you need to know:
- John Kariitwa, the newly crowned Mr Uganda had a tough outing in his first tournament outside Uganda, finishing third in the light heavyweight category.
Bodybuilders who participated at the 2021 Mr 001 Championship picked valuable lessons from the Mombasa event and promised to do better going forward.
Lightweight Lameck Muwanga was the best performer among the team of over 10 Ugandans, finishing fifth in the overall final, while Bantamweight Axam Kisekka finished sixth and vowed to scale greater heights in the coming events.
“Winning the bantamweight category in East Africa, as I have always done in Uganda, means I’m the best in that weight in the region,” Kisekka told us.
“Now I should go to a bigger weight division because I badly want to win Mr Kampala 2022.”
Kisekka said the regional competitors were physically superior but he beat them in free posing – a skill he attributes to Muwanga.
John Kariitwa, the newly crowned Mr Uganda had a tough outing in his first tournament outside Uganda, finishing third in the light heavyweight category.
He, like all Ugandans, complains that some of the Kenya and Tanzania competitors were not natural bodybuilders which put the Ugandans – who say they avoid steroids – at a disadvantage.
“Mombasa was quite tough…we would have done better if it was a purely natural competition,” Kariitwa said. “But we picked positives and if we work harder, good days are coming.”
Kariitwa also reiterated his call to the government to support bodybuilders. “The Kenyans easily access supplements but here we get them at a price twice higher,” he said. “The National Council of Sports should have been part of this arrangement but we went on our own. Government should support bodybuilding like it does other sports.”
2019 Mr Kampala Godfrey Lubega, who dropped out in the welterweight category, also decried competing against steroid-enhanced athletes.
