adminEllina Mhlanga
Senior Sports Reporter
THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe will be seeking better fortunes when the new season begins in January.
Following mixed fortunes in the 2022 season, the national association will be hoping to build on the successes and improve in the lacking areas.
NAAZ president, Tendayi Tagara, said a number of their partners have come on board to support various activities for the upcoming season.
“Our 2023 calendar is loaded with funded activities from most of our partners. Very soon we will be launching a new partnership with another partner especially as we consolidate support for the track athletes.”
The season is expected to take off on January 7, 2023, with a number of provincial cross-country events as usual. The provincial competitions will be followed by the national championships in the same month.
However, there are several major competitions lined-up for next year starting with the World Cross-country Championships to be staged in Australia in February. This will be followed by the World Indoor Championships in March, in China and World Athletics Relays in May.
The 2023 World Athletics Championships will then take place in Budapest, Hungary, in August.
Zimbabwe had three athletes in the previous edition and are hoping to improve the number for next year. But they will have to up their game to meet their targets considering that qualifying standards continue to improve.
“We have learnt that we can qualify using the home grown solution and that is the way to go. We want to make sure more athletes qualify in the regional competitions, going out to Europe must be the final and in exceptional cases.
“But the little resources that we have, we want to use them to qualify in the regional competitions,” said Tagara.
They will also be looking at competing in a number of regional and continental competitions that include the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) Region Five Cross-country, CAA Under-20 Championships, Africa Senior Championships and the African Games in Ghana.
“We are happy that the juniors will be having quite a number of competitions. We are aiming to qualify and reach the finals of the Africa Junior Championships that will be in Zambia, in April.
“We want to send a full contingent of juniors — between 30 and 40 athletes — because it’s closer. At the same time, it means that we are also going to send a number of coaches.
“We will also be preparing for the African Games which will also make sure that coaches who go there are highly qualified coaches,” said Tagara.
The NAAZ president said there is a lot for the coaches to learn during the competition and only qualified coaches will lead their teams.
While NAAZ are shifting focus to next year, they are also bracing for the African Union Sports Council Region Five Youth Games due to take place in December in Malawi this year.
Among their highlights for the 2022 season is the top 10 finish by Isaac Mpofu in the men’s marathon at the World Championships and the 4x100m relay team’s bronze medal at the Senior Africa Championships.
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