Masiwa now certified classifier

course held in Germany.
Masiwa, an optometrist, and Junica Dari, attended the VI Classifiers course held in Bonn by the International Paralympic Committee and International Blind Sports Federation last weekend.
The course was meant to recruit new classifiers to assess athletes with visual impairment and was open to ophthalmologists and optometrists with a proven record of expertise in low vision and sufficient English skills.
Successful participants of the course were certified as VI International Classifiers and will be recognised by IPC and IBSA.
They therefore can classify athletes with visual impairment competing in the IPC Sports — athletics, swimming, alpine skiing and nordic skiing  and in IBSA Sports Global — judo and football five-a-side.
ZNPC secretary-general, Lewis Garaba, said Masiwa’s achievement was a positive development for sport, as they did not have such experts in the past.
“They went there to represent the national paralympic committee and Lynett did well.
“She is now an international classifier. It means we can now classify our athletes in a professional manner into their proper categories and competitions. It also means that the quality of our athletes will be high because we now have an internationally recognised expert.
“It means we won’t have problems when we send our athletes to various competitions, as they will be properly classified into their categories.
“When we went to Mozambique for the All-Africa Games we had some of our athletes doing well but because we did not have a qualified classifier up to now we do not know if they qualified for the Paralympic Games,” said Garaba.
Garaba hailed the Sports Commission for their assistance in sending the two representatives to attend the course.