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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz) has released its calendar for the 2022 season with the association hoping to retain the bulk of their traditional events.
The association has failed to host most of their major events in the last two years owing to Covid-19.
However, with spaces opening up in the last quarter of the year, they are hopeful that things will normalise next year.
The 2022 season begins in January with cross-country events set for Bulawayo and Harare on the weekend of January 15-16.
Old Mutual remains Naaz’s main sponsor for road races, covering six races in different parts of the country, including the Tanganda half-marathon in Manicaland.
Some of the events to be hosted by Naaz will include National Open, National Junior Championships, Inter-Club Championships in Harare and Bulawayo, and National Inter-provincials.
In Bulawayo, the Bulawayo Athletics Board (Bab) Cross Country Championships will open proceedings on January 16, at the traditional venue Mpopoma Park.
The first track and field event of the year will take place at White City Stadium on February 6.
The month of April will see Bab play host to the PPC Matopos 33 Miler, Naaz national junior championships as well as the traditional ZITF Coca-Cola Four Minute Miler.
Races such as the Nkulumane Half-Marathon, Rail Trail Marathon and Liquor Hub fun run are all scheduled to take place during the 2021 athletics season.
Bab chairman, Watson Madanyika said: “We are excited about the coming year.
Hopefully we will be able to host more events than we did this year.
Our athletes have already started showing signs of improvement. Hopefully we get the chance to have more competitions.”
The new Covid-19 variant has forced the Naaz to postpone a high-level international coaching course as well as an Indaba that had been scheduled for Bulawayo.
Germany’s Karl Günter Lange had been seconded by World Athletics to facilitate a Level Two Middle and Long-Distance coaching course and a seminar that was to precede the coaching clinic.
The seminar that had been billed for December 9 was rescheduled to January 30, 2022 while the Level Two Middle and Long-Distance coaching course that was supposed to run from December 10 to 17 has been moved to January 31-February 7.
The coaching clinic would have seen trainers participating. — innocentskizoe
Online Reporter