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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
UPCOMING sprinter Tinotenda Matiyenga and triple jumper Chengetayi Mapaya will be the only athletes to represent Zimbabwe at this year’s World Junior championships in Poland this month.

The championships are slated for July 19 to 24 in Bydgoszcz.

Matiyenga qualified for the 200m event in May, before booking his place in the 100m last month during the Southern African Region Junior championships.

Mapaya qualified for triple jump at the same regional competition with a leap of 15.65m, earning himself a gold medal in the process.

The entries for the championships closed on June 30 and Zimbabwe have only two athletes that qualified for the event.

National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe vice-president development, Enias Nhoro said although they would have wanted more athletes to qualify the entries for the competition have closed.

“The World Junior is a very high level competition where we have got the best of the world. So what we are saying is we are praying that our athletes qualify for the finals. We expect them to get to the quarter-finals and semi-finals, which is a great achievement for us.

“We are talking of athletes who are coming from countries with high scientific training facilities, they have the resources, so it’s not going to be an easy task for them. But they are doing well in our own terms, managing to qualify with the few resources we have. There are other countries who don’t even qualify,” said Nhoro.

Nhoro said there is need to revisit the system when it comes to the development of athletes if the country is to challenge for medals at such events as the world championships.

“In sport anything can happen if we beef up our resources for training, exposure and train them from a young age, from 10 to 12 years. We are saying this is the age we need to start training and developing these athletes to compete for medals.

“We need to put resources into the Under-10, Under-12 and Under-14s and as they graduate to Under-16 they will be focused and would have matured in what they are doing. There is a lot that is involved in coaching which we do not consider.

“And there is also the seasonal training we do, which does not take us anywhere. Those people who win medals they train all year round. It is our system that we need to revisit to talk of world class athletes. At the moment we can talk of going to participate nearly in all activities unless we have those who starts development and training at a young age and get exposure,” said Nhoro.

Matiyenga and Mapaya are expected to leave for Poland on July 17.