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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
ZIMBABWE’S top female rower Micheen Thornycroft and fellow Olympian, the Mighty Warriors’ poster girl Rudo Neshamba, have been nominated for the 2016 Sportswoman of the Year award in the annual Zimbabwe International Women’s Awards.
The Zimbabwe International Women’s Awards (ZIWA) were founded in 2013 to celebrate and recognise the unsung heroines in the Zimbabwean community.
The awards seek to applaud women who have made a contribution to the Zimbabwean community through entrepreneurship, education, social welfare, charitable and humanitarian works, entertainment and the arts.
In fact, there are several categories in the ZIWA awards in which, for the past three years, quite a number of top Zimbabwean female personalities who are based in this country and in the Diaspora were nominated to fight for accolades such as Actress of the Year, Artist of the Year, Author of the Year, Blogger of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Businesswoman of the Year, Fashion Designer of the Year and Sportswoman of the Year, among others.
According to the official website of the ZIWA awards, the selection of nominees for the awards is done by a “dedicated Panel” who work with various publications and industry insiders to select women that are doing outstanding work in their related fields.
A list is then compiled and from that voting can then begin; and women with the most votes in their respective categories will be eligible to win on the awards night.
Women nominated will then have between 24 and 48 hours to confirm their nomination. Upon confirming, they are immediately added to the Poll list in order for the public to cast their vote with the winners announced on the awards night ceremony.
This year’s ZIWA awards night ceremony has been slated for October 29 at the award-winning Athena in Leicester, United Kingdom, where two of the country’s representatives at this year’s Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, rower Thornycroft and female footballer Neshamba will be fighting for the Sportswoman of the Year award with three other nominees — Rutendo Nyahora (athletics), Camilla Kruger (equestrian) and Helen Costa Sinclair (bodybuilding).
Neshamba was part of the history-making Mighty Warriors who competed in the women’s soccer tournament at last month’s Rio Games in Brazil for the first time in the history of the Olympics.
The Mighty Warriors, however, lost all their group matches at the Rio Games and were forced to come back home early.
At the Rio Games, the Mighty Warriors were joined by Thornycroft and Kruger who carried the Zimbabwean flag in rowing’s single sculls and equestrian respectively.
Nyahora was also at this year’s Rio Games where she represented Zimbabwe in the women’s marathon in which she came home in 92nd place in 2 hours 47 minutes 32 seconds.
And like her fellow Olympians Thornycroft, Neshamba and Kruger, Nyahora left Rio de Janeiro empty-handed after failing to win a medal of any colour but she was nominated for the Sportswoman of the Year award in this year’s ZIWA awards.
Exciting young female motocross rider Tanya Muzinda, now 11, won the Sportswoman of the Year accolade at last year’s ZIWA awards.
Voting for this year’s awards closes on September 30 before the winners are announced at “a glamorous awards ceremony night” on October 29 at the prestigious Athena in Leicester, England.
Online Reporter