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Sports Reporter
THE Cheetahs are next week set to camp in South Africa as part of their final preparations for the Sevens Rugby Olympic Qualifier scheduled for Johannesburg at the end of next week.

This is not the first time that the Cheetahs will be preparing from South Africa, having done so earlier this year before their tour of Hong Kong where they finished second in the World Sevens Series core membership qualification tournament.

Coach Daniel Hondo has named an experienced 16-man squad that will be trimmed to 12 by the end of the week.

This includes the likes of Tapiwa Tsomondo, Biselele Tshamala, Lenience Tambwera and Manasah Sita who last featured for the Cheeatahs almost four years ago.

Zimbabwe will be in South Africa from Sunday where they will make use of High Performance Centre facilities under the guidance of Hondo and assistant Gary Hewitt.

The tournament gets underway on November 14.

“Our camp starts on the eighth, but it will be in Pretoria where all the players (foreign and locally-based) will meet for a week, but in the mean time, I am training with the locally-based players having both gym and field sessions,” said Hondo.

Missing from the Cheetahs will be captain Hilton “Rihanna” Mudariki who picked a hamstring injury during Zimbabwe’s tour of Kenya, but the scrummy believes Zimbabwe will make it for the 2016 Rio Games.

The University of Johannesburg scrum-half will only return to action in a month’s time.

“I am working on my rehab at the moment from my injury in Kenya so I am still a few weeks off from full training. I’ll start light running this week, so in three weeks time, I’ll be eligible for full training.

“We tried everything we could to get me back in time for the Olympic qualifier, but I am still not strong enough, but in saying that we have quality players in the Cheetahs group who will do the job,” said Mudariki.

Hondo says he will miss the services of the former Young Sables skipper.

“Jacques (Leitao former captain) will have to lead the side, he (Mudariki) is a regular starter so whoever comes in will have to step up and take the tournament game by game,” said Hondo.

Zimbabwe’s biggest threat at the Olympic Qualifier tournament will be Kenya — a core Sevens Series member — but the Cheetahs are not largely focused on Shujaa.

“Our target is to win the competition, we believe we can go out there and win it, but we have to take it game by game make sure we tick the boxes in the pool stages and progress from there,” said Hondo.

“We are blessed to have a conditioning coach in Grant Mitchell who is working the boys hard in the gym and coach Danny who is very experienced. So we have everything to go to South Africa and qualify.

“Kenya are a quality side, but I do believe we can spring a surprise. After the tournament in Kenya we have gone away and worked on a few areas that we need to improve on.”