11 athletes including Erica will play Asian Karate

The 19th Asian Games was held at the same place last year. Karate's Erika Gurung won a historic silver medal in that event. 11 players from Nepal including Erika will participate in the championship to be held from September 20 to 22. For that, the 18-member Nepali karate team will go there on Tuesday.

Erica will compete in the Asiad women's 68 kg weight group. Women's Under 55kg Jia Karki, Under 61 kg Nirupa Dong Tamang and Alyssa Rascotti Magar, Megha Limbu and Tappi Thapa will participate in Team Kata. Esila will compete in the singles kata.

Min Bahadur Tamang under 60 kg, Santosh Shrestha under 67 kg, Mohammad Sheikhu Alam under 84 kg, Ashish Shrestha above 84 kg and Swanim Manandhar in single kata will compete. All players have experience of playing international tournaments. Santosh, Sheikhu, Swanim, Nirupa and Elisa also played in the 19th Asian Games. Kushal Shrestha is the head coach of the

team and Mandekaji Shrestha, the double gold winner of SAG, is the coach. Kushal, who played the role of coach in the 19th Asiad, participated in the Asian Senior Karate.

manager is the vice president of Nepal Karate Federation Majendra Singh and member Ravi Maharjan. Nepal is medalless in Asian Senior Karate. Before the competition, Nepal Karate Federation President Yuvraj Lama and General Secretary Dawa Gurung will also go to participate in the Congress of the Asian Karate Federation to be held in Hangzhou on September 18. 367 players from 31 countries will participate in the tournament. There will be 17 events, 9 for men and 8 for women. Member-Secretary of National Sports Council (Rakhep) Tanklal Ghising and Secretary General of Nepal Olympic Committee Nilendraraj Shrestha bid farewell to the team on Monday.

Member-Secretary Ghising advised the athletes to perform well as the karate team is going to play the tournament with systematic preparation. He expressed his commitment to include the players who get medals in this competition in the national team preparation for strategic preparation with Rakhepal facilities.

Erica said that it was a great opportunity to play in the Asian Championship and said that since the world champions will play, it is a good platform for all of us players to gather experience and present their abilities. Erica said everyone was excited because the preparations were good.