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Ellina Mhlanga Senior Sports Reporter
AS provinces brace for the national cross-country championships to be held this month, Midlands Athletics Board says they are looking forward to stiff competition when they hold their selection event tomorrow.
For Midlands, athletes will converge in Zvishavane with participants competing in four categories — seniors, juniors, youths and cadets.
Senior men and women are up for the 10km race and the juniors will compete in the 8km races.
Youths (Under-16 and Under-18) will battle it out in the 4km race and Cadets (Under-13, Under-14 and Under-15) are up for the 2km race.
It is also their provincial season-opener.
Midlands Athletics Board secretary, William Chuwa, said 50 athletes have so far confirmed their participation.
“So far 50 athletes from 10 clubs have confirmed their participation. We are expecting to select 36 athletes, thus six for each category.
“We are expecting the best of competition in the senior men’s 10km race where we have the majority of entries with 20 so far confirmed participants.
“We are also happy that rural clubs have also shown an interest in the event hence entries have also been confirmed from as far as Gokwe South, Silobela and Mberengwa.
“This is good news for Midlands Athletics Board as we are cognisant of the fact that there is a lot of raw talent that needs identification and nurturing in rural Midlands,” said Chuwa.
All provinces are this weekend expected to stage their provincial selection events to pick their teams for the national championships scheduled for February 19, in Kadoma.
Harare are also raring to go, having held their season-opener last month and it gave athletes and coaches the opportunity to assess their state of preparedness.
Apart from the season-opener held at Morris Depot, some of the athletes participated in the Mr Pace Chitungwiza cross-country event.
HAB vice-chairperson, Aaron Whyte, said the events give coaches the platform to assess athletes in different competitions.
“We don’t want to select athletes based only on one event, we want to make it a process.” He said selection should be on merit and not past performances.
“We don’t want to base our selection on names, people should be chosen on merit not what they did in the past,” said Whyte.
Participation is free for tomorrow’s HAB event to take place at Allan Wilson School as the province seeks to encourage all athletes to attend, so that they pick the best team.
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