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Ellina Mhlanga Senior Sports Reporter
TRIATHLON Zimbabwe national coach Pamela Fulton is hopeful of an exciting second half of the season as domestic competition resume this Sunday at Mount Pleasant Pool after a break for the festive holidays.
Sunday’s event will be the sixth selection event for the youth (Under-13 and Under-15) and most of the athletes in this category are expected to compete as they seek to earn points for selection into the team for upcoming tours. Those that make the grade will compete at the South Africa Youth Championships next month.
“As we start the second half of the season, we move into a busy and exciting period, with two tours to South Africa, followed by our own flagship Troutbeck event early April.
“With the youth tour in February, this weekend is only a selection race for the youth. The juniors travel in March so (they) have more time to qualify.
“This season we have a competitive Under-13 category with some outstanding talent. It will be interesting to see on Sunday who has been training hard and who has been on holiday. “The beauty about this category is their race distance is short and at this age, their natural talent will see them through the race. With schools starting this coming week, I would assume most athletes are back from their travels and will be racing,” said Fulton.
However, for those that fail to attain enough points they can still earn the ticket for the tour if they meet a specific time set to qualify.
“The Under-13 selection criteria is different to the criteria for the older athletes, to try and alleviate some pressure off the youngsters. They can either qualify through the season’s points based system or if they have been unable to attain enough points, they will need to qualify by achieving a certain time.”
There will also be an Africa Triathlon Junior Cup event set to run during the youth championships and two juniors — Anje Van As and Duwan Botha have expressed their interest to compete.
Van As has just graduated from the youth category and will be competing at the junior level for the first time.
Besides the South Africa Youth and Junior Championships, there is also the Troutbeck event to look forward to and the Africa Championships.
The Africa Championships will be held later in the year, in Egypt.
“Our athletes have been racing really well this season. But we continue to need to improve in the swim discipline, specifically Open water swimming. Limited safe Open water locations always make this difficult for us.
“This year Africa champs is only scheduled for October in Egypt. This will allow our athletes to have a short break at the end of our season, before building up again for the Africa Championships.
“The downfall of the event being in October, is that our Under-17 and Under-19 categories will be in the middle of important exams,” said Fulton.
Triathlon Zimbabwe’s president, David Ellis, said they have made progress in preparing for the upcoming tours.
“We are excited for the group to have the exposure to compete at a higher level in a different environment and we have great expectations from them as they have worked hard throughout the season and grown from their experiences in Morocco,” said Ellis.
The national association have also lined up a number of duathlon events for Sunday, as well as aquathlon and aquabike events.
Online Reporter