Banuve Tabakaucoro [left] and Eugene Vollmer right departed the country today for a series of competitions in Australia.

The prospects of taking part in this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games is now a step away for Banuve Tabakaucoro and Eugene Vollmer.

The two left the country today for a series of competitions in Australia.

With the two athletes failing to meet the qualifying times and distance respectively during the National Easter Championship in April, they still have a chance at the lone universality spot.

However, pacific sprint king Tabakaucoro says it will not be easy to compete in Australia as the pandemic has affected his training.

“Well I’m going to be honest it hasn’t been the best ever since Suva went into lockdown and everything closing down, stadiums and gyms like that so we have had to make do with what we had.”

During the Easter Championship which was the last local event recognized as a qualifier, Tabakaucoro was supposed to run a qualifying time of 10.50 seconds but the ‘Bau Bullet’ clocked a time of 10.79 seconds.

He had another chance in the 200m to meet the 20.24 seconds cut off time but he ran a time of 21.79 seconds.

Tabakaucoro says he is just excited to be able to compete again at an international level and while in Australia he can do more training.

The other athlete also vying for the universality spot is Fiji’s shot-put champion Mustafa Fall.

Fiji has been given three universality spots for the Olympic Games with one for Athletics and two for Swimming.