adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe juniors development director Silas Muringani says they remain hopeful of more athletes qualifying for the World Junior championships set for next month following the qualification of Tinotenda Matiyenga and Chengetayi Mapaya recently in Zambia. Matiyenga met the qualification times in the 100m and 200m events, while Mapaya qualified for triple jump during the Southern Africa Region Junior championships held in Lusaka.
Zimbabwe came third in the championships with six medals — two gold, three silver and one bronze behind winners South Africa and Zambia.
Mapaya scooped one of the gold medals for Zimbabwe booking his place at the World Junior championships scheduled for July 19 to 24 in Poland.
Muringani said they are confident Mapaya will do well in Poland as he surpassed the qualification standard.
“One of the gold medals came from Chengetayi Mapaya in triple jump with a leap of 15.65m.
“And that qualified him for the World Junior championships. The qualifying time is 15.6m.
“This means he is well above the qualifying standard of 15.6m. And we expect him to do even better in Poland.
“Tinotenda Matiyenga ran qualifying times in 100m and 200m. We have Shingirayi Hlanguyo, who qualified for 100m in South Africa,” said Muringani.
Muringani said they are still verifying results for other athletes who took part in some local events and are optimistic they will have a few more making the grade.
“We are still verifying some results for athletes that ran here, the likes of Nigel Jena and if we are to get all results we might be talking of maybe four athletes qualifying for the World Junior championships.
“Two of them qualifying straight from home which means the coaches here are working hard,” Muringani added.
Muringani said despite the failure by some of the athletes to qualify the 24 athletes they took to the championships had some good performances both in the track and field events.
“We also had a spirited performance by Albert Chawonza, he slightly missed qualification. But it was actually good although it didn’t hand him any medal.”
Online Reporter