City of Cape Town workers have come out tops in the Southern African Inter-Municipal Sports Association Games.
The council team took part in various sporting codes such as table tennis, golf, cycling, pool, darts and netball at the annual games held in a selected Southern African Development Country (SADC).
This year the games were hosted by the city of Gaborone in Botswana, with 62 municipalities participating.
It included municipalities from South Africa, Namibia, eSwatini, Lesotho, Zambia and Botswana.
Municipalities could enter 18 sporting codes and Cape Town chose six.
The City’s manne and one woman took to the podium in three events, namely table tennis, cycling and golf.
One of the gold medallists, Henry Arends, showed off his bat and ball skills in table tennis.
The 50-year-old from Mitchells Plain, who joined the team a year ago, was over the moon when he won all of his events, in the singles, doubles with Keenan Holt and teams table tennis with Keenan, Andrew Cupido and Llewellyn Lackay.
“I joined the City of Cape Town employees sports and wellness fraternity to keep fit,” Henry explained.
“I would say the physical medals and the trophies were secondary, it’s all about the feeling of repping the City of Cape Town. We had the privilege to do it and show who we are.”
The cycling team bagged gold, silver and bronze medals at the games, with Francois de Villiers coming out tops in the Individual Time Trial.
Francois also received a bronze medal in the road race.
Fire and Rescue Services spokesperson Jermaine Carelse blazed through the road on his bike and bagged silver in the 80km road race, and two additional bronze medals.
The golf team won silver, while female cyclist Lucinda Mentor brought home silver in her race.
Spokesperson Lizel Steenkamp says the City is tremendously proud of the players.
“Their hard work during the year paid off. The players put in endless hours of practice,” Lizel added.
“We are proud of everyone who participated in the Games, many of them participating for the first time. We have homework to do and our team can only grow stronger.”