Online Reporter
Sibonokuhle Mboni, [email protected]
CITY Stallion Athletics Club, founded in 2024 will send six athletes to the White City Stars Open Track and Field Championships on Saturday.
This was confirmed on Thursday by co-founder and coach Mengezi Sibanda.
The event will be used to assess the team’s readiness for the 2026/27 season as they have been working on endurance in the off-season.
Stallion caters mainly for juniors aged 15 to 20 with a handful of seniors. At the moment the club has 14 registered athletes.
Several will miss Saturday’s event due to school examinations’ commitments, leaving a six-athlete squad to represent the club at the championships who include Trust Mahungu (800m), Mthokozisi Mboni (5 000m), Patience Tshuma (800m/400m), Brian Sibanda (3000m) and Mthandazo (800m) and the coach himself.
With the club coming from off-season, Sibanda said the focus has shifted firmly to building endurance across the squad, rather than chasing results. Saturday’s championships, he said, will serve as a practical test of how ready athletes are as most of training has been on building endurance.
“I want to see how this new system I’m applying is taking part on the athletes’ body,” Sibanda said, framing the meet less as a competition to win and more as a chance to measure the logic behind the programme in a real racing environment, against athletes from other clubs.
Founded just two years ago, City Stallion remains a young club still building its base and Sibanda was candid about the obstacles it faces daily. The club trains on a small track with limited facilities, and lacks basic training kit and gear altogether with some athletes competing and training in torn running shoes, a detail Sibanda raised without complaint, more as a statement of the club’s reality than a grievance.
Despite those constraints, City Stallion continues to field athletes across a broad range of endurance events, from 400m sprints up to the grueling 5000m, at competitive meets like Saturday’s championships. For a club barely two years old, operating with minimal resources, that consistency is notable.
The club’s presence at White City on Saturday reflects a wider pattern in Bulawayo athletics small, community-founded clubs quietly feeding athletes and talent into the city’s broader competitive scene, often with little more than a coach’s commitment and a training ground to work with.
For Sibanda though Saturday is about data as much as competition a real-world check on whether his endurance-building approach is doing what he hopes for his athletes’ bodies, ahead of the season proper.
