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Mandla Ncube, Sports Reporter
All is set for the 62nd edition of the Rowing Association of Zimbabwe (RAZ) national championships at Mazowe Dam today.
Seven rowing clubs from across the country will take part in the championships. Over 100 rowers including some from Zambia are expected to grace the occasion.
“We are very excited to be working with the Zambians, we would like much closer ties with them so that we can improve the standards of Rowing in Zimbabwe and this will make us a much stronger rowing side,” said RAZ President, Andrew Lorimer.
With most of the rowers being school rowing clubs, Lorimer said the championships are serving as a form of preparation for the South African rowing schools championships at the beginning of March. Last year St George’s College were crowned champions in the boys’ category while Chisipite won in the girls grouping.
Despite this year’s regatta missing the 2018 ANSA’s team of the year, twin rowers Patrick and Rory Plunket, the event will not be short of any rowing sensation with Andrew Peebles who represented Zimbabwe at 2016 Rio Olympics expected to take part.
This year’s première race will have 30 events split between single sculler, double sculler and quadruple sculler event ranging from Under-13 to Under-19. Apart from the junior events, the event will accommodate older rowers.
“We will also have masters rowing for people between the age of 27 years up until 60 years, we have a whole bunch of rowers who are in their 40s and 50s and we are trying to encourage them into masters rowing because the Maters World Rowing championships will be held in South Africa in 2023,” he said.
Lorimer expressed his hopes of having all the Zimbabwean universities take part in rowing as there are abundant scholarships with foreign universities for people doing rowing.
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