The Sunday News
ZIMBABWE’s former queen of short and long distance running Samukeliso Moyo has set her sights on bankrolling her own marathon in the near future. Moyo revealed this at the Simon Muzenda half marathon in Gutu recently.
Asked why she had been quiet for some time before her appearance in Gutu, Moyo said:
“I am training plus you know am ageing, am getting old, so am doing something that I will fall on when I retire. And you know you don’t eat everything, even uprooting the tree, you have to eat the fruits, then leave the tree so that when you grow old, you will be just getting something from what you have been doing rather than just become redundant.’’
When pushed further, she added:
“I have a small project of mine I’m doing. I’m building a big house somewhere, the completion of which will see me end up as being a sponsor of a marathon. We don’t know what God has for us in front there, one day I might wake up and say here is a race I am sponsoring.’’
The 41-year-old Moyo is a proud owner of two houses, one in Gweru and the other in Bulawayo.
Although she couldn’t disclose much about the type of building she was putting up, Sunday News Sport later learnt that she was building a “mini hotel’’ at Senga suburb near the Midlands State University, which she aims to turn into lodgings for the MSU students.
In an illustrious career than spans more than two decades, Moyo claimed the bronze medal in the women’s 5 000 metres at the 1998 Commonwealth Games.
She also represented Zimbabwe at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships on a number of occasions, with her best finishes being 10th in the short race at the 1998 edition and 15th in the 1999 long race.
She won titles at the African Southern Regional Championships, including wins over 1 500 metres, 5 000m and in cross country.
Moyo began focusing on road running competitions and won back-to-back titles at the São Silvestre de Luanda 15K race in Angola from 1997–98. She won the Rand Athletic Club 10km race in 2001, taking the title in a time of 34:24. She set a personal best in the marathon at the 2008 Pyongyang Marathon, where she finished with a time of 2:37:17.
She has won both the Johannesburg City Marathon and the Cape Town City Marathons, while she was runner-up at the Soweto Marathon, among other races in the lucrative South African circuit.
She was also at one stage the undisputed queen of short and long distance running in Zimbabwe where she virtually won anything on offer.
Moyo also disclosed that she had also been busy as the vice-chairperson of the Athletics Commission, adding that she would spend more time fighting for the welfare of the athletes.
“I am the vice-chairperson of the Athletics Commission. We are representing athletes the wrong or right way, we are their ambassadors. We want to see the sport grow in Zimbabwe,’’ she said.
