admin
Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe are confident that athletes will push for better times at the National Open Championships that will be held at the National Sports Stadium B Arena today.
This is the second national competition after the National Cross Country Championships that were held in Kadoma last month.
And the event has been spiced-up by the One Mile Challenge that is sponsored by JM Busha 54 Races and is meant to encourage athletes to post some good times.
An athlete who runs a 1 500m event in 3 minutes 38 seconds will walk away with US$500.
However, if the set time is not met, the first athlete home will win US$200, while the second-placed gets US$100 and the third-placed will walk away with US$50.
The track and field meet is organised by NAAZ. And NAAZ president, Tendai Tagara, said it is a good incentive as it encourages athletes to post some good times.
“The stage has been set for our National Open Championship. The major highlight of the competition is the JM Busha 54 Races One Mile Challenge of 1 500 meters men. The winner should run 3:38, for the athlete to walk away with US$500, if the athlete fails, the consolation prizes are US$200, US$100 and US$50 respectively for the first three athletes,” said Tagara.
“The objective for setting times is to push athletes to run some good times that will help towards qualifying for the World Championships, so it is not just a matter of giving out prizes, we have a target,” he said.
Tagara believes that if they keep attracting sponsors to their events, the athletes, who now prefer road races, will return to the track.
“We want to train as many juniors as possible in the track so that they don’t rush to the road races where they will burn out and leave the track as early as possible.
“We want to enhance longevity in athletes’ track events,” he said.
Tagara said the turnout in some of the races was really good, especially the 10 000m men.
He commended their major partner, JM Busha, who have sponsored numerous athletics races.
“Once again we thank JM Busha that has been our major sponsor for our National Championships, Inter-Provincial championships for coming on board and giving these incentives, and l am happy with the feedback from the athletes regarding this. We are also happy with the turnout in the 10 000m.
“We are happy with that sponsorship. It will incentive our athletes to run in good times. Remember we are in a better period of trying to clock better times. We also have the 10 000m Challenge where we are giving US$50 for the first athlete home, US$30 for the second, and US$20 for the third runner home,” said Tagara.
Due to Covid-19 health protocol, the association will stage a limited number of events at a time. And Tagara appealed to the athletes and fans to adhere to the regulations.
“I want to remind our spectators that we are still under Covid and we are still governed by regulations for Covid, we are following protocols, and guided by the Sports Commission. So we want to limit the number of spectators, so as soon as athletes are done with their events, we encourage them to leave the arena so that we reduce the numbers.
“I also want to appeal to the athletes and coaches, that we are following SRC statutory and requirements, so one cannot run all the events in the competition because of the Covid regulations. So we are limiting events, especially the field events so that in the next event, we also put those events that will not be in the programme this week.
‘’So it is critical to understand that we are limiting events. We must follow the requirements and we have a limited number of contact events, because it is required, and we are happy that we have been allowed to bring a few of those events that we can manage. And we are happy that once the situation improves, we will increase the number of events,” said Tagara.
Online Reporter