The Sunday News
FOLLOWING a disastrous outing at the recent 20th CAA African Senior Championships where they failed to win any medals, Zimbabwe will consider sending its athletes to South Africa’s high performance centres.
President of Athletics South Africa, Aleck Sikhosana in a briefing to the media at the end of the CAA 20th African Senior Championships at Kings Park Athletics Stadium, said his country, and Durban in particular would consider accommodating athletes from the continent to set base at their universities and high performance centres.
“Many of our athletes across the continent, have expressed their joy, their happiness and some of them even want come back for high performance programmes, even to establish their training bases in Durban studying at universities and all that. And for that we will be working with the city and the universities to take the process forward,’’ said Sikhosana.
Immediately responding to the SA offer, National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe secretary Cythia Phiri, who accompanied Team Zimbabwe to the Championships, said they will accept the offer with both hands.
“We are definitely considering that (to send athletes to SA). South Africa is just by the corner, it gives us a great opportunity of sending quite a good number of athletes to the high performance centres,’’ said Phiri.
Zimbabwe was represented at the continent’s track and field showcase by 25 athletes, and the duo of Siphathisiwe Machaya and Naphtel Magwezi who were given the thumbs up by the Confederation of African Athletics to officiate there.
However, Team Zimbabwe had a nightmarish performance at the Championships where they failed to win any medals despite taking part in five finals.
Sprinter Gabriel Mvumvure (200m), Nyasha Mutsetse (800m), Jacob Mugomeri (10 000m), and Wellington Varevi (1 500m), were medal hopefuls who failed at the last hurdle.
The 4 x 400 and 4 x 100 teams also reached the finals.
However, Phiri was full of praises for the athletes.
“There has been some noticeable performances considering that some of our athletes managed to qualify through the finals, however, there is still room for improvement,’’ said Phiri.
“Considering that Team Zimbabwe was competing with top athletes am delighted with their performance.
“Some of the athletes who performed very well were Gabriel (Mvumvure) who had a seasons best time in 200m (20,77secs), Wellington Varevi who ran 1 500m in 3:48.40 minutes which was his personal best.
“As for Team Zimbabwe both management and athletes worked together as a team despite not getting medals. Our level of team spirit was equally as good as that of other teams,’’ said Phiri.
Keegan Cooke’s quest for a medal in the decathlon was scampered when he could not take part in the paulvault event, after he lost his poles to thieves who stole his car, a 1997 Toyota Prado at Morningside, Durban.
The car had $5 000 worth of athletics training equipment intended for training at schools in Zimbabwe.
Host South Africa were the overall winners with 23 medals, 11 gold, seven silver and five bronze, Kenya were second on the medals table with four gold, four silver and three bronze while Nigeria also with four gold medals were third with two silver and five bronze.
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