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Ellina Mhlanga
Senior Sport Reporter
ATHELTICS coach Briad Nhubu says he is content with the team’s effort that saw them contributing 13 medals to Team Zimbabwe at the African Union Sports Council Region Five Youth Games in Maseru, Lesotho.
Athletics competition ended on Saturday and the team weighed in with 13 medals for Team Zimbabwe who got 48 medals at the Regional Games.
The curtain came down on the Games yesterday.
Zimbabwe participated in eight sport codes – athletics, swimming, volleyball, boxing, tennis, taekwondo, gymnastics and judo. And they managed to pick medals in all the disciplines.
Swimming led the way after amassing 26 medals – seven gold, 10 silver and nine bronze.
Athletics picked four gold medals, seven silver and two bronze.
The four gold medals came from Anneka Colgrave, who won two gold medals in women’s long jump and triple jump while Thabela Ndlovu got gold in the women’s 800m event and Hassan Maganezi claimed gold in men’s high jump.
The medley relay team made up of David Nyamufarira, Tasimbiswa Kadziyanike, Nigel Mutetwa and Maganezi settled for silver. They then teamed-up again for 4x100m relay and came second in 43.77 seconds to win another silver.
Nyamufarira won a silver medal in 110m hurdles and bronze in 100m.
The women’s 4x100m team, consisting of Tanyaradzwa Kakono, Tanyaradzwa Kashambe, Ndlovu and Colgrave, got silver with a time of 53:28 seconds
Naomi Musindo clinched bronze in shot put.
Nhubu said the environment has not been conducive because of the Covid-19 pandemic and winning medals at the Games is encouraging.
“I am overwhelmed by the performance of the team. This is superb and quite pleasing given the disturbances induced by the pandemic that left us with less time for preparations.
“It is my sincere gratitude towards our esteemed club coaches who had put shoulder to the wheel to make sure that athletes remained in good shape during the lockdown period.
“I am humbled by the unwavering support they had rendered to us during the hard times and together, here we are celebrating.
“The level of competition was fair for the age category and also again looking at the duration our athletes have been out of competitive sport, all countries were equally affected. So for me it was a fairly good come back for our regional championships,” said Nhubu.
Most of the athletes in the team are likely to feature in the next edition of the Games to be hosted by Malawi next year.
Besides the Region Five Games, athletics is also looking at fielding a team at the Africa Youth Championships next year and the World Under-20 Championships.
“The participation of the team in these Games was very crucial given that next year some of the athletes will still be eligible for the Malawi edition.
“The exposure and experience has benefited both us and our management in terms of our strengths and weaknesses.
“Our homework is to start now to turn our weaknesses into strengths and also maintain the good that we managed.
“We want to thank NAAZ and the Government, through the Sports Commission, for availing this opportunity for our athletes to showcase their potential.
“It is my hope that if we start preparing in time, we are quite capable of amassing much more medals. So, preparing for Malawi has to start as early as yesterday,” said Nhubu.
Online Reporter