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Ellina Mhlanga–Senior Sports Reporter
AS the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe brace for the World Championships that begin on Friday, director of coaching, talent identification and development Lisimati Phakamile says they are hoping for a change of fortunes at the global meet.
The world meet takes off on Friday in Eugene, Oregon, United States.
It is running until July 24.
Zimbabwe are fielding triple jumper Chengetayi Mapaya, sprinter Tinotenda Matiyenga and Isaac Mpofu in the men’s marathon.
Phakamile, who will be in charge of the team during the meet, said they are pinning their hopes on Mapaya for a podium finish considering his performance during the season.
“We are basically quite excited about the qualifications of these three athletes and as a country we are very hopeful and positive of a podium performance this time around.
“We are actually pinning our hopes on Chengetayi to perform exceptionally well, get to the final and at least attempt for a medal.
“Coming to this competition, Chengetayi was ranked fourth in the world according to performance and automatically qualified through his close to national record jump which he did in the US.
“So we are hoping that he will improve from the fourth position in the world up to at least a medal position.
“We are quite excited we have seen all the three athletes compete, as a country we have watched and we know what they can do, we are very positive and we are wishing them the best of luck in this endeavour,” said Phakamile.
The United States-based athlete Mapaya earned his ticket to the World Championships when leaping 17.26m during the NCAA Championships last month. It was his personal best.
Mapaya made his debut at the World Championships in 2019, in Doha, Qatar.
Sprinter, Matiyenga, will compete in the men’s 200m event.
In 2017, Zimbabwe had only marathon runners qualifying for the World Championships and in 2019 it was mostly marathon runners and Mapaya.
However, for this edition only Mpofu qualified for marathon. He was part of the team that represented the country in 2019.
“Qualifying athletes to this level of competition is a very long process . . . It takes a number of years to groom and develop a podium performance athlete or a World Championship material athlete.
“So it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of resources and input by coaches, athletes and everyone around the athlete.
“As a country we are close now to getting to the medals and we are happy that we haven’t failed in a number of years to send athletes that have qualified.
We have always sent athletes that have qualified to the Championships and this time around I am happy that we have a number who have also gone through.
“We are saying the programmes that we started long back, the programmes that we are always in and investing in for our athletes are paying back and we are seeing that we have athletes both from local and international qualifying for the World Champs to represent Zimbabwe.
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