Zimpapers Logo

Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
ATHLETES from across the country will tomorrow converge in Kadoma for the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe Inter-Provincials Cross Country Championships.
The event will see all provinces taking part in the senior and junior competitions.
The senior men will compete in a 12km race while the senior women and junior men will participate in the 8km event.

The junior women will fight for honours in the 6km race. The championships, which are usually held in Redcliff, have been moved to Kadoma and NAAZ vice-president responsible for development, Enias Nhoro, said the move was aimed at promoting the sport in all provinces.

“The whole idea is we want to expose the sport to the people and we want them to see what’s happening at the highest level of competition in the sport. It’s going to be rotational from province to province. All provinces have confirmed their participation. We are expecting each province to have a minimum of 24 athletes,” said Nhoro.

Nhoro said although each province will field 24 athletes, the event was open to other athletes who did not make it into the provincial teams as they are using this competition to select a team that will represent the nation in the Southern Africa region cross country pencilled for February 14 to 16.

“The 24 that are coming are those selected by the province but we have those that were not selected on the day of (provincial) selection, they are all encouraged to come and take part.

“What we are saying is we want the country to be represented by the best. We are sending four senior women, junior men, junior women and eight senior men. The others will make a team as four but for the senior men they have to be eight to make a team. So we might be sending 20 athletes for the Southern Africa region cross country from February 14 to 16. We are expecting some quality competition,” said Nhoro.

Harare Athletics Board secretary general, Silas Muringani, said they were sending a full team for the competition.
“We are taking a full team of 24 athletes, we will be fielding six athletes per age-group in each category. We hope to continue domination.
“We are taking mostly unheralded athletes who did very well in the selection event we had,” said Muringani.