NAAZ hopeful

Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe president, Tendai Tagara, said they are hopeful more athletes will qualify for the IAAF World Championships scheduled for August in Beijing, China.

The championships will be held from August 22 to 30 and the deadline for qualification is August 12.

So far Zimbabwe have four athletes that have qualified for the event — long distance runners Cuthbert Nyasango, Gilbert Mutandiro and Cephas Pasipamire while Tatenda Tsumba qualified in the 200m.

Tagara said there are other athletes that are close to qualification and they hope to meet the deadline.

In the previous edition Zimbabwe fielded two athletes Cephas Pasipamire and Gabriel Mvumvure.

“The three long distance runners are the ones who are going to represent Zimbabwe in the marathon.

“There were seven of them but we took the top three because we can only field three athletes in marathon.”

“For track events we have Tatenda Tsumba, who is based in the United States. We are also waiting for Francis Zimwara’s time confirmation from IAAF.

“We are hoping Ngoni Makusha and Gabriel Mvumvure will qualify, they are close to qualifying and they still have chances.

“There are also three other athletes based in the United States and Rodswell Ndlovu in South Africa, we are expecting that he qualifies in the 400m event, he is just missing with split seconds,” said Tagara.

Tagara, however, said in the women’s category they may end up sending just one representative since there is no one close to meeting the qualification times.