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Grace Chingoma Senior Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWEAN women’s sporting teams and athletes have proved to be the shining light in the nation’s quest for success on the international fora since Independence.
As the world marked International Women’s Day on Tuesday, The Herald looked at some of the female athletes that have held the country’s flag high in their disciplines.
Sporting luminaries like Cara Black, Kirsty Coventry, the “Golden Girls’’ of the women’s field hockey team, the Mighty Warriors, Tanya Muzinda and lately Kudakwashe Chiwandire have competed at the highest level and with some marked success.
Black’s recent quest for induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame was going to be the highest accolade ever received by a tennis player in the country and it came a few months before the men’s Davis Cup team slipped in the tournament rankings.
The former world number one-ranked doubles tennis player won the fans vote for the Hall of Fame Class of 2022. However, none of the nominated players managed to get the required 72 percent vote and will be back on the ballot next year.
Black was set to become the first Africa-born woman nominated for the tennis Hall of Fame. And this was going to be a huge recognition for the tennis ace who won five women’s doubles Grand Slam titles, including three at Wimbledon, and another five major titles in mixed doubles.
Zimbabwe’s only team gold medal on the international arena belongs to the famed “Golden Girls’’ from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Russia.
In fact, all of Zimbabwe’s Olympic medals are held by women, with the rest having been won by swimming icon, Coventry, who is now the Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation.
The women’s football team, the Mighty Warriors, became the first football team in the country to qualify for the Olympic Games in 2016, achieving a feat that has eluded their more popular and widely supported male compatriots.
Women have taken the lead but, surprisingly, their level of recognition is below that of men.
Although it looks a tall order to reach some of the lofty heights reached by the “Golden Girls’’, Black or Coventry, it is comforting that more young women are making strides to excel in their disciplines and are willing to take on the baton.
Just last month, a new boxing queen was born.
Kudakwashe “Take Money” Chiwandire bagged a feat never achieved by any other boxer in the history of the sport in this country when she was crowned the new World Boxing Council (WBC) women’s super-bantamweight interim gold champion after outclassing Zambian female boxing icon, Catherine Phiri.
The 26-year-old Chiwandire became the second African woman after Phiri to land the title after she beat the veteran boxer in her backyard in Lusaka.
Chiwandire achieved all that with the odds heavily stacked against her. With assistance of her manager Clyde Musonda, Chiwandire overcame a number of challenges as they prepared for the fight.
She was set to endure a road trip to the neighbouring country only for Zororo-Phumulani to come to her rescue at the last hour by providing airfares.
Despite the big achievement, Chiwandire is yet to be rewarded back home. The title came with a purse of US$1 000 but that is not enough to cover the expenses she incurred towards the build-up to the big fight.
The inequalities in rewarding athletes in sport remain a thorny issue as male athletes continue to enjoy more financial resources compared to their female counterparts.
Promising Zimbabwean tennis player, Sasha Natalie Chimedza, is set to go places after she was recently selected among 44 talented junior and professional players in the world who will receive the Grand Slam Player Grants for 2022, funded by the ITF’s Grand Slam Player Development Programme. Zimbabwe’s new rising tennis sensation, who is based in South Africa, is currently ranked sixth in Africa and 172nd in the ITF Junior World Rankings.
Recently, another Zimbabwean, Natsiraishe Maritsa, was the winner for Africa at the International Olympic Committee’s 2021 Women and Sport Awards, in Beijing, China.
Maritsa is making a difference in her community, in Epworth, through her Vulnerable Underaged People’s Auditorium initiative, which uses taekwondo to fight child marriages and teenage pregnancy.
Online Reporter