Ndejje University’s queen of stamina and one of Uganda’s finest athlete Ajok Dorcas has been chosen to be among the sports men and women to represent Uganda at the 2018 Common Wealth Games this April in Australia.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XXI Commonwealth Games and now known as Gold Coast 2018, is an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth that will be held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia between 4 and 15 April 2018.
Ajok was chosen after emerging victorious at the just concluded selection Olympics at Namboole stadium. Ajok faced stiff competition from athletes like Cheptengei, Bahati sadiq and is set to face stiffer competitors from Kenya and other countries which produces world class sportsmen and women.
This year’s Common Wealth games will have over 70 nations competing in 128 sports disciplines with the major games starting on 4th April at Carrara stadium
The current approved sports include the 10 core sports, athletics, badminton, boxing, hockey, lawn bowls, netball (for women), rugby sevens, squash, swimming and weightlifting. Integrated disabled competitions are also scheduled for the Games in nine sports: swimming, athletics, cycling, table tennis, powerlifting and lawn bowls. Along these events for the first time EAD events in triathlon will be held, with the medals being added to the final tally for each nation. A record 38 para events will be contested at these games.
The program will be broadly similar to that of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, with the major changes being the dropping of judo, the reintroduction of basketball, the debut of women’s rugby sevens and beach volleyball.
On 7 October 2016, it was announced seven new events for women were added to the sport program, meaning there will be an equal number of events for men and women. This marks the first time in history that a major multi-sport event will have equality in terms of events. In total 275 events in 18 sports will be contested.
Ajok Dorcas is a finalist student of business studies at Ndejje’s main campus in Luwero. Last year, she was among the students from Uganda at the world university games in Taipei, Taiwan and has won a number of gold medals for the University and Uganda.
