Chronicle Editor
Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
LOCAL athletes have been challenged to pursue qualification for acclaimed global tournaments and not just compete for recreational purposes.
National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz) director of coaching, talent identification and development Phakamile Lisimathi said qualification for international events is possible after last Saturday’s performances in the interprovincial championships held in Harare.
Clinton Muunga and Samukeliso Ndebele qualified for the World Junior Championships to be held in Kenya from August 17-22 following impressive performances in the national championships.
Matabeleland South sprinter Muunga qualified for both the 100m and 200m races after clocking 10.46 seconds in the 100m dash and 21.21 seconds in the longer sprint.
Qualifying times for the junior men are 10.58 seconds for 100m and 21.38 seconds for the 200m.
Matabeleland North-born Ndebele qualified for the 200m World Junior Championships finals with a time of 23.30 seconds in the women’s race. The standard qualifying time for the global Under-20 competition in the 200m race is 24.35 seconds.
“We’re quite impressed and excited as the department of talent identification and development. We have juniors who’ve posted very impressive times at the national championships. We’re happy with the progress, especially if you look at how Covid-19 impacted all sports.
The progression has been great and from where we are, we have more athletes that can qualify for the World Junior Championships because they’ve been working hard,” said Lisimathi.
He challenged coaches and athletes to work hard to improve their personal records.
“We have a number of shortcomings that we wish our athletes could work on. We want to build a culture of competing and running for good times. Remember, athletics is about time, distance or height. We want to move away from a situation where athletes compete for recreational purposes or fun. Now it’s time to compete for podium performance results, improve on quality of performances, compete and chase time as we compete. We challenge athletes to try to compete and challenge for qualification times every time they step out onto the field,” Lisimathi said. — @ZililoR
Online Reporter