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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe director in charge of junior development, Silas Muringani, believes with better preparations there is still room for improvement by local athletes on the international stage.

This comes after Zimbabwe’s athletes struggled at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships over the weekend in Uganda.

Zimbabwe were represented by the quartet of Wellington Varevi, who came 59th in the senior men’s race while Rudo Mhonderwa finished on position 72 in the senior women’s race.

Dumo Mkhwananzi and Dzidzai Gumede managed position 91st and 90th respectively in the Under-20 category.

Muringani said while the team did not have enough time to acclimatise after leaving for Uganda on Friday, there is need to revisit the preparations ahead of such meetings.

“Maybe the hot temperatures and being East Africa, it’s humid, could have affected their performances. They didn’t have much time to acclimatise but we cannot blame it on that. We also have to look at our preparations back home, where did they go to prepare? We kept them in their bases with their coaches because we did not have resources.

“There was need for them to go where the weather is humid, to practise under similar conditions to what they would face in Uganda. The other thing might have been that these guys were going there (world championships) for the first time, tactically they might not know what to do,” said Muringani.

Countries such as Kenya had some of their experienced athletes including Geoffrey Kamworor, who defended his title in the senior men’s race.

Ethiopia’s Letesenbet Gidey retained her title in the Under-20. Muringani added that if the country is to climb up the ladder, the ideal situation is to engage countries like Kenya that have dominated in this area and send local athletes for training.

“The solution should be for us to take our athletes to countries like Kenya, where they train at high altitude . . . it’s a way of conditioning athletes.

“This is an endurance event. It’s a question of maybe taking them to these academies and they are there not only for six months but one year or two years,” Muringani said.

NAAZ director of youth Briad Nhubu said resources were a challenge, but there is need to compete beyond regional events.

“We might be lagging behind in terms of perfection of certain performance factors, but we are saying as a country since we are having challenges almost in all sectors because of the economy, we are being affected. Kenya and Ethiopia have well exposed athletes in international competitions. So in our scenario, the furthest they are going is regional,” said Nhubu.

The four athletes came back yesterday and Varevi’s coach, Aaron White, said it was a learning curve for them.

“I commend him for finishing 59. But I think what we need to do is to apply what we leant from the championships. We now know that when working, we need to practise fast starts, to push from the start to the end. There is no time to rest, once you are in such races you need to push from the start to the end,” said White.

In 2015, Zimbabwe sent two athletes — Olivia Chitate and Jacob Mugomeri.