adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
TEAM Zimbabwe chef de mission, Joseph Muchechetere, says they are now in the process of presenting the final team that will represent the country at the African Games scheduled for September 4 to 19 in Congo Brazzaville to the Sports Commission. At this year’s Africa Games, Zimbabwe will take part in eight sporting disciplines – athletics, football, gymnastics, judo, karate, swimming, taekwondo and tennis.
In May, the Sports Commission named a provisional team with some of the disciplines still in the running for qualification and yesterday Muchechetere said of the 220-member team they had in May, they are now set to send 115 athletes and officials.
“We have finalised the team but in terms of protocol we need to present it to the Sports and Recreation Commission, then as the process the Sports Commission will present it to the ministry, then the ministry to the Head of State, His Excellency President Mugabe.
“These are the processes but otherwise the team is already there.
“As from March, we had picked a provisional team. We were fully aware that some of the disciplines were in the running for qualification and in the process we dropped I think almost half of the team.
“The team was about 220 but because basketball men failed to qualify, rugby was withdrawn, volleyball both men and women failed to qualify, we now have a team of 115 including the team management and the sports science and medicine team. So the team is made up of 115 athletes and officials at the moment.
“By the 15th of July we had already came up with the team. So these are just protocol issues but otherwise the team is there unless someone has got an injury and might withdraw from the travelling party.
“Then we need to also add about 15 officials we call country delegation. These are the senior people so in total Team Zimbabwe will be made up of 130 people including the country delegation,” said Muchechetere.
Muchechetere said they had a sports science and medicine workshop last week for their medical team to ensure they will implement measures that will strengthen the team.
“We held the sports science and sports medicine workshop last Saturday. We were also making sure that we have drilled our medical team so that they implement measures which would also strengthen the team because they also need to add value to that.
“We want them at this point in time to be able to talk to every athlete, they need to know them. We don’t need to take athletes that are injured.
“It has happened in the past in some of the teams, so we don’t want to come to such a situation,” Muchechetere said.
The Team Zimbabwe chef de mission said they are likely to go into camp on August 20 but he indicated that most of the athletes are already active in various competitions in their respective disciplines.
Some of the tennis players such as Takanyi Garanganga, Mark Fynn and Benjamin Lock were recently in Zimbabwe for the Davis Cup tie against Moldova and before that they were competing in different tournaments across the world.
Swimmers Kirsty Coventry, Sean Gunn and James Lawson are in Russia for the FINA World Championships and the swimming competition will start tomorrow.
“We have picked quality, we didn’t want to experiment so we have taken medal hopefuls. This is going to be the best team ever sent by Zimbabwe in terms of medals and in terms of performance, that’s our expectation.
“We are also saying that we have Kirsty Coventry, she is a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes Commission.
“So she is already at that level and she is the most experienced athlete at that level. We also want to appoint her so that she becomes the captain of the team and are still working who is going to be the deputy,” said Muchechetere.
Muchechetere said the team is expected to leave for Congo Brazzaville between August 30 and 31.
Online Reporter