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Ellina Mhlanga Senior Sports Reporter

ALL eyes will be on Ngonidzashe Ncube when competes at the Enschede Marathon tomorrow in the Netherlands in an effort to try and qualify for the World Athletics Championships.

Ncube, who left the country on Wednesday, is chasing the qualifying time of 2 hours 11 minutes 30 seconds for the men’s marathon.

It is the same qualifying time that was used for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Ncube, who ran 2 hours 12 minutes 25 seconds in his attempt to qualify for the Olympics last year, remains one of the hopefuls for the country in terms of qualification for the World Athletics Championships.  There have been some camps involving athletes chasing qualifying times for the world meet scheduled to take place from July 15 to 24 in the United States.

The camps are led by coach Benson Chauke. He is working with Cephas Pasipamire and Collen Makaza, to assist the athletes with their preparations.

Speaking from the Netherlands yesterday, Ncube said he is hoping to run the qualifying time and make his second appearance at the World Championships.

“I am ready for Sunday and I will try my best to apply everything we did during training with my coach and the national team coach (Benson) Chauke, Pasipamire and Makaza.

“I hope the weather will be favourable on Sunday. “What I know is that I am going to put all my effort and see how it goes. There is a good field that includes athletes from Kenya and Ethiopia.

“I think it will push me because the race has some top athletes and they are all aiming to run good times,” said Ncube.

The race is taking place under the elite label.  Speaking just before Ncube’s departure, Chauke said they have done all they can in preparation for tomorrow’s marathon.

“We have done our bit under the circumstances. It has been a long road for Ngoni. We have done what we as coaches needed to do though we could have done better with more resources and the like.

“He hasn’t done much of running which has been on the public domain for this whole preparation period, he has been focusing specifically on his training.

“We have looked at most of his previous races, we have looked at his splits where he probably dropped some valuable time. We have discussed about that. So we are hoping and praying that as he goes for this one, everything will just work together for him,” said Chauke.

South Africa-based Rutendo Nyahora, who had targeted to compete at the Vienna Marathon also taking place tomorrow in pursuit of qualification to the World Championships, could not get entry and will not be part of the field tomorrow.

Ncube together with Munyaradzi Jari and Isaac Mpofu made up the men’s marathon team that competed at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.

Nyahora represented the country in the women’s category.

Jari and Mpofu are among the other athletes who are also pursuing qualification and are expected to compete in South Africa on May 8.