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Ellina Mhlanga–Senior Sports Reporter 

PODIUM performance remains the target for any sporting discipline, and for Judo Association of Zimbabwe, they are looking at turning around their fortunes when they resume competition this year.

The national association had their annual meeting recently to map the way forward as they return to competition after a two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Among the leading topics at the meeting was the need to start putting in place mechanisms that would help athletes improve to match their counterparts when they compete outside the country. 

JAZ president, Smart Deke, said creating a more competitive environment locally is going to be key if they are to make progress.  

“It was a fruitful meeting. We did agree that we are now putting everything together in terms of the importance and seriousness of competitions, especially international competitions. We really want to move away from being participants to be the podium performance athletes.

“So we are going to try and build on local competition and have many local competitions that will develop our athletes to match their counterparts at regional, continental, as well as at the world stage.

“Of late, we did not have enough competitions and now that we need to increase the participation of athletes, we do agree that we are going to have monthly competitions.

“Clubs are going to have club competitions within themselves so that we can improve our participation. So that’s what we all agreed on,” said Deke. 

However, it is going to be a process and the fact that most athletes spent the last two years with no competitive competition means coaches also have a lot of work to do. 

The national association is targeting the African Union Sports Council Region Five Youth Games in Malawi later in the year and the Africa Youth Games in Egypt.

The Zimbabwe Open Competition is expected to be the first tournament of the season.

It was initially scheduled for today at Girls High School in Harare but it was moved to April 2 as the national association needed to finalise some logistics concerning the venue. 

“We are now going to have our competition on the 2nd of April. The school gave us that date. So we are going to have cadets, youth and senior competition.

“All clubs are preparing for this. All the athletes are ready for these competitions and last week we also had our coaches attending the coaching courses. 

“We are just starting, we need to assess our coaches and renew their CPR certificates as well and just assessing all the coaching skills again from our coaches before we dispatch them for the schools programme,” said Deke. 

JAZ have in the last two years received equipment that include mats and 500 judo suits from the International Judo Federation as part of support for their developmental programmes.