Our athletes are getting short end of the stick

THERE is a hilarious advert that is flighted on digital satellite television by South African fast-food franchise “Chicken Licken” about a fictional long-distance runner called “Mgijimi”, who apparently at one time received his gold medal while his competitors were still a long way from finishing their laps.

This is obviously an exaggeration, as it was meant to be comical.

However, in high school, there were always those athletic types who seemingly had bionic abilities of outpacing their competitors by several laps, such that by the time the chasing pack laboured to the finishing line, they would have sufficiently rested. One such long-distance runner was former Glen View High 2 learner Michael Ngaaseke, who went on to participate in regional and international competitions.

In 2002, he emerged the 18th best African runner at the world cross-country championships in Dublin, Ireland.

He also was the first runner from the Southern African region to cross the finish line in the men’s 12-kilometre event. Fortunately, he got to pursue his dream, thanks to the sponsorship he got from a local mine, which also helped to incubate his talent.

No doubt, plenty other athletes such as Ngaaseke have emerged over the years, but clearly fewer than the country would have ordinarily produced if it had the requisite facilities from community and school levels, including high-performance centres, to nurture talent.

The need to create an ecosystem that also identifies and ensures that talented athletes do not fall through the cracks cannot be overemphasised.

By last week, the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe only had four athletes — marathoners Isaac Mpofu and Rutendo Nyahora, as well as sprinters Tapiwa Makarawu and Makanakaishe Charamba — who had qualified for the Paris Olympics.

Bra Shakes hopes that more representatives will come from the 10-member team at the Africa Senior Track and Field Championships in Doula, Cameroon, which end on Wednesday.

This is the last chance saloon ahead of the June 30 deadline.

But our local contingent that is destined for Paris is far smaller relative to Botswana, where six athletes, as well as the men’s 4X400m relay team, have already qualified.

Not only are they going there to make the numbers, but they are genuine medal hopefuls.

In May this year, their relay team fired warning shots at the World Athletics Relays Bahamas 24. Botswana made history as the first African country to win a men’s sprint event at the World Relays. They won gold with a world-leading time of 2:59.11 minutes, helped by the supersonic Letsile Tebogo, who will also be contender for the 100m and 200m races. Botswana’s performances are not a fluke, as the country has over the past decade given us exciting talents such as Isaac Makwala and Nijel Amos.

Amos, for example, claimed Botswana’s first Olympic medal in 2012 after winning silver in the men’s 800m, while the relay team of Makwala, Bayapo Ndori, Zibane Ngozi and Baboloki Thebe won men’s 4x400m bronze at the delayed 2020 Games in Tokyo.

As a country, we need to invest the same resources in sport, if not more, as those we sink in education, which we seem to disproportionately focus on.

Sport can be equally rewarding just like education.

In any case, learners need to be supported in their pursuit of different career paths. The decrepit sporting infrastructure we have in our communities betrays our seeming disinterest in sport. It, therefore, behoves the Ministry of Sports, Recreation, Arts and Culture, as well as the Sports and Recreation Commission, to take the lead in implementing a deliberate plan of action that similarly prioritises sports at the grassroots level through providing the needed and expected support.

Zimbabwe Cricket’s initiative to spread the sport to schools in high-density suburbs, which helped unearth cricketers such as Tatenda Taibu and Stuart Matsikenyeri, is instructive.

In an interview with BBC earlier this year, Botswana and Africa’s rising star Tebogo clearly indicated what African countries needed to focus on to promote athletics.

“There is something we have to fight through,” he said. “There are some resources that are not there in Africa — they are only in the European and American countries. An indoor track should be built where Africans can practise indoors. They should be able to do recovery sessions in Africa instead of having to go to France or Europe.

“I would like to see more infrastructure built for the athletes in Africa because we only have four or five recognisable tracks. We have to increase those tracks. We have to try to use everything that we have to our advantage.”

Food for thought.

Until next time.

Peace!

Yours Sincerely,

Bra Shakes.