adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
DEFENDING champions in the Zimbabwe Universities Sports Association athletics championships, University of Zimbabwe, have vowed to retain their title when they compete in the event today in Bulawayo.
The championships will be held at the National University of Science and Technology with participants competing in track and field events. Twelve universities are expected to compete including the Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University.
UZ sports director, Life Chemhere, said they are ready to compete and will be hoping to defend their title.
“As an institution, we take each and every event separately from the previous event. We take every event seriously, you can’t say I won last year so I will win again this year because quite a lot of things are happening in athletics, new ways of coaching and people are now using technology.
“We are there to defend our championship. We have got a dedicated and stronger team than we had last year. This was proved at an invitational competition we had two weeks ago and due to the preparations we had, we hope to excel.
“We have the right material and also we have the right platform and facilities. For the track events we are there, should we have challenges we are possibly looking at the field events,” said Chemhere.
Chemhere said they are pinning their hopes on athletes such as Zezokuhle Ndlovu and Leona Musikavanhu.
Zusa president, Liberty Maidza, said today’s meet is their first competition of the year and are looking forward to an exciting event. “We expect 12 universities to come, we have a new member which is the Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University. We will have all events except for pole vault and hurdles events.
“We are expecting about 480 athletes and we now have that competition in universities. The level of competition is actually rising each year. This is the first Zusa event for 2014 where we are expecting to select a team to represent us at the ZITISU championships.
“We are looking forward to a lot of competition with most of our athletes that represented Zimbabwe at the World Games in Russia participating, especially in the women’s category. Notable athlete is Leona Musikavanhu from UZ in the 100m and 200m events. In the men’s section we should have a tight competition in the 100m and 200m events from the likes of Nyasha Charandura of Nust, Itai Vambe from UZ and Nigel Toma of MSU.
“This is also in preparation for the Fatsu games pencilled for July in Kenya but people are still debating to whether have them in July or December,” said Maidza.
The Zusa president, who was re-elected into office this year, said he is hoping to produce elite athletes that can compete at the Olympics and will be working closely with the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter