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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
PROVINCIAL cross-country championships will open the 2015 National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe calendar with Bulawayo Athletics Board staging their competition this weekend in Mpopoma. The Bulawayo event, slated for Sunday, will be the first event of the year after Harare cancelled their cross-country championships that were scheduled for Saturday due to financial constraints.

Harare Athletics Board secretary-general Silas Muringani said they have to move the event to a later date because they were yet to secure a venue.

“We are not having that event because we do not have a venue. The National Sports Stadium is booked and the school grounds we sometimes use are not yet ready, so we are trying to convince ZRP to prepare their ground. So the problem we have at the moment is that of venues.

“The National Sports Stadium is expensive, we would want to use it and the B Arena most of the time is fully booked although it’s slightly cheaper but at the moment we don’t have money,” said Muringani.

While there will be no activity in Harare, BAB chairperson Manuel Mpofu said they are ready to host their first event for this year which they will use as a platform to select their team for the national event pencilled fin or next month.

The competition will see the Under-16 boys, competing in a 6km race while the girls will race in a 4km event. The Under-18 boys will participate in the 8km race while the Under-18 girls and Under-20 will compete in the 6km race. The senior men and women will fight for honours in the 12km and 8km race respectively.

“It’s our first event and we are expecting plus or minus 100 athletes. We notified our athletes when they were going on a break that our first event is on the second week of January, so they went for the break knowing about the event. And they are really prepared for this competition.

“It’s also a selection event for athletes for the national event. As Bulawayo we are used to carry about 27 athletes for the nationals and if the athletes do well we may increase the number,” said Mpofu.

Provinces are expected to continue hosting competitions in their respective areas with the national cross-country championships pencilled in for February 14 at Kadoma Sports Club. The cross-country championships will be followed by the NAAZ track and field championships on February 21 at White City in Bulawayo.

The local events will present the national association with the opportunity to assess their athletes for international events with their first assignment being the CAA Junior championships in March in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

They will be followed by the IAAF World Cross-Country in China and CAA African Youth Championships in Mauritius in the same month.

There is also the World Youth championships set for July in Columbia while the senior championships will take place in Beijing, China, in August.

NAAZ will also be hoping to send a team for the All-Africa Games scheduled for September in Congo Brazza- ville.

Enias Nhoro, the NAAZ vice-president, said for their athletes to do well at the forthcoming events they need resources to expose them to a higher level of competition prior to the events.

“Our preparations have already started. The only hiccup is resources. We could do better with resources. We could have sent our athletes to Kenya for further training and high performance centres in South Africa but we will have to do with what we have.