The Sunday News
TRAIN hard and fight easy was a military slogan which was also adopted by our own Five Brigade, instructors Colonels Dyke and Fuyane, in the late 1980s.
This aged maxim “Train Hard, Fight Easy” is more than rhetoric, and in fact reflects the arduousness inherent to preparing someone for either war or competition.
This same route similarly is the same route we should take as we prepare our boys and girls for the 6th edition of the African Union Sports Council Region Five Under-20 Games which will be held in this country in Bulawayo from 5 to 14 December.
However, revelations this week that our Team Zimbabwe’s preparations for the Games have been hampered by inadequate funding, is sad news indeed.
Ironically, the bad news come amidst suggestions that the loc should equally attach more importance to the preparations as much as we are putting in the upgrading of the facilities.
“Funding has really been our Achilles heel, no doubt about that and this has forced us to stagger our training programmes as we cannot afford to have everyone in camp,” Team Zimbabwe spokesperson Tirivashe Nhehweyembwa told our sister paper, Chronicle on Thursday.
We understand the organisers came up with a $745 000 budget for the 216 athletes and 47 coaches, with $250 000 having already been paid by the Government as participation fees.
According to the official close to $100 000 was need to cover camping expenses and there is a need to have weekend camps until final preparations in Bulawayo from 25 November to the start of the Games.
We are told Team Zimbabwe comprise 40 swimmers of boys and girls, 24 basketball players (boys and girls), 36 football players (boys and girls), 50 track and field athletes (boys and girls), 10 boxers and an equal number of judo athletes, 12 netball and four tennis players as well as 30 athletes who will compete in athletics for the visually impaired (boys and girls).
Ironically, one of the goals of the Games is to showcase the Region’s young stars and create an international platform for them to demonstrate their abilities. And, this time the platform is at our doorstep in Bulawayo. And that was made possible by non other than his Excellency President Mugabe, so there is no excuse for failure, both in participation and administratively.
Now the challenge is: let’s come out collectively to support our athletes prepare adequately. And just like soldiers, so that they fight for us and easily win medals for this sporting nation that has been starved of heroes and heroines for a long time.
We can do that by coming up with a reward that should either induce action or motivate the effort.
In the past there has been a lackadaisical approach in coming up with such incentives.
Such gestures of goodwill were done either at the last minute or long after participation had begun.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, that the Team has got no money, this is an opportunity for those who have the sporting pride of this country at heart to stand up and be counted. May those who believe in junior sports development, also stand up and do something.
Let’s put up an enabling environment for our representatives so that we “Train Hard (before the Games), and then Fight Easy” come the Games proper.
*Overheard in a city pub recently:
Magistrate to child: Do you want to live with your mother?
Child: No
Magistrate: Why?
Child: She beats me up.
Magistrate: Okay, so you want to live with dad?
Child: No
Magistrate: Why not?
Child: He beats me up too.
Magistrate: So who do you want to live with?
Child: Bosso!
Magistrate: Why
Child: They seldom beat anyone!
Kikikikikiki!
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