The Sunday News
Sports Reporter
THE Matabeleland South track and field championships which were supposed to be held this weekend were shelved following the Matabeleland South Athletics Board’s failure to raise funds for the event, chairman Phakamile Lisimati has revealed. The two-day event, which was scheduled for Pelandaba Stadium in Gwanda, was supposed to start yesterday and end today.
Lisimati said just like other sporting entities in the country, MSAB had found the going tough in raising adequate funds largely due to the fact that they did not have a permanent sponsor.
“We do not have a sponsor who gives us funds for all our sporting events, so we have decided to let this go after all our efforts to raise funds hit a brick wall,” said Lisimati.
He, however, said there were plans to liaise with clubs in the province to help them with staging such competitions in future, as most of them were funded by big mining companies.
“In the near future we are planning to engage some of our clubs in order for us to be able to host these events because they come in handy in the development of our athletes,” he said.
Lisimati said despite the setback, athletics in the province was still doing well as evidenced by one of their rising stars Philemon Dlodlo who produced the fastest time of 10,56s in the 100m event at a National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe meeting held in Bulawayo last month.
The event is on the NAAZ calendar and it was supposed to be part of the ongoing athletics teams’ selections for various upcoming events, with the major one being the Under-20 team for the December Region Five games to be staged in the city.
The games in Bulawayo will see 13 nations alongside the hosts taking part.
The countries which are expected to take part include hosts Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Angola, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, Mauritius and Seychelles with over 3 000 athletes expected to take part in eight different sports codes, including athletics.
