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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe president Tendai Tagara has said they are excited of the forthcoming International Association of Athletics Federations Level Two course in August as they seek to turn around their fortunes.

The development comes after the national association were recently given the green-light by the international federation to hold the course that is usually done by the regional centres.

And participating countries are limited in terms of the number of coaches they can send.
The course is specifically for high jump coaches and is scheduled to take place early August in Bulawayo.

“We have been granted the authority to run the International Level Two course in Zimbabwe in August by the IAAF. We have been struggling to get this course for the past four years and it was only this (last) week when we were informed that we can hold this course.

“This course is specifically for high jump specialists, you train for Level One at national level and then Level Two you go to the Regional Centre, which is Kenya and each federation can send one or two coaches for this course.

“We then argued to the IAAF the need for us to have this course in Zimbabwe at our own cost. Therefore we were granted the authority and a German expert will be coming to Zimbabwe in August to run this IAAF Level Two course,” said Tagara.

The NAAZ president said the numbers are still low when it comes to coaches that specialise in jumps and there is need to bridge that gap since they have noticed the potential within that area.
They are looking at having 20 coaches attending.

“I think it’s important to note that presently Zimbabwe has only four coaches who are experts in jumps and if this course goes through successfully it means Zimbabwe will be having 24 coaches at that elite level. So we are very happy with this development from the IAAF.

“We have many coaches who are waiting for this Level Two course to take place. The opportunity for Kenya is limited therefore we argued that we want to run this course in our own country so that we have more coaches qualifying.
“Therefore we are asking our coaches to grab this opportunity and attend this course.

“The course will be run in Bulawayo which we have declared as home of athletics. So we are also in the process of linking with our partners to see how best we can run this course which is quite expensive. It will be an eight-day course which starts from the 1st of August to the 8th,” said Tagara.

Tagara said they are targeting 20 coaches and would want each province to provide two coaches for the course.