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Ellina Mhlanga Senior Sports Reporter
AFTER retaining the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe Track and Field Inter-provincial Championships title over the weekend, Harare Province is looking at a long-term athletes development initiative that will keep their athletes on top.
The move is expected to bring all clubs under the Harare Athletic Board together and focus more on development at a provincial level.
With a number of their juniors posting some promising performances towards qualification to the World Under-20 Championships, HAB vice-chairperson, Aaron Whyte, said they are looking at providing more competitions but with focus also on long term development.
“We still working on organising more competitions because we know our athletes still need to qualify. So as a province we will work on giving them more competitions.
“We also encourage them to take part in some regional competitions like in South Africa, Zambia and Botswana, so that they can get close to qualifying.
“But we are looking at the long term athletes development of the athletes we are not just looking at qualifying. We are even now starting to look at 2024 Olympics and all that. So we are pushing for competition mainly for cadets and the youths so that they also get a feel of how it is to compete out there.
“And also have some time to prepare because these are the athletes who are going to go to the Olympics in the next four to eight years we really need to start preparing them now and we want to look at it holistically from a provincial point of view,” said Whyte.
Whyte said they are looking at having a provincial development programme.
“We want to move away from this aspect of just focusing on clubs, at individual clubs. We want to have a developmental programme like for the whole province so that we take it from that level,” said Whyte.
On the forthcoming World Under-20 to be hosted by Kenya in August, Whyte is confident if the coaches and athletes push a bit more, it’s achievable.
Online Reporter