Andrew
Sports Reporter
NATIONAL swimming coach Masi Takaedza has called for local facilities to be spruced up and more exposure for local athletes to ensure they make an impression on the world stage.
He believes the poor state of training facilities and lack of exposure were their biggest undoing at the recently held 19th FINA World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Local swimmers found the going tough in Hungary, with none of the members of the small contingent securing a semi-final berth.
Zimbabwe had four swimmers — Nomvula Mjimba, Liam Davis, Donata Katai and Denilson Cyprianos — at the competitions, which also featured water polo, diving, open water and artistic swimming.
Davis, Katai and Denilson came close but failed to proceed to the semi-finals despite breaking their personal best times.
Cyprianos would probably want to forget the championships in a hurry, as he was forced to withdraw from the competition because of injury. He, therefore, missed out on taking aim at the 100m and 200m backstroke events.
Apart from the injury setback to Cyprianos, Takaedza, who is also the head of swimming at Peterhouse Group of Schools, noted that even the training time they had was not adequate for a competition of the magnitude of FINA World Championships.
“As Zimbabwe, we need to expose more swimmers to higher levels of competition and we need to find competitions that are not as high as the World Championships but competitive enough to give our swimmers a higher quality of competition.
“This will hopefully prepare them for competitions like the World Championships and the Olympics.
“We would have loved a semi-final place but it wasn’t to be.”
There was also need to improve on tactical awareness for major races, he added.
“The biggest lesson for us was that we need to change our approach when going to these big meets.”
Decorated Olympian Kirsty Coventry remains the only Zimbabwean to have swam her way into the semi-finals at the FINA World Championships.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter