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Ellina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
ZIMBABWE’S sprinter Panashe Majuru is fancying his chances of qualifying for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games after wrapping up his season in the United Kingdom.

He is attached to Birchfield Harriers Athletics Club.

Majuru, who returned home towards the end of last month after spending close to three months in the UK training and competing under Birchfield Harriers, said his attachment to the club has helped him improve his performances.

He posted several positive results as he ran his personal best times in both the 400m and 400m hurdles.

He is back home where he has just started training at the University of Zimbabwe with the aim of qualifying for next year’s Olympic Games.

Majuru is still attached to Birchfield Harriers until next August and is working using the programmes he gets from his UK-based coach Joseph Caines.

“Now, my plan is to train for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I have already started my training,’’ he said.

“I started on Friday, so I will be training here at UZ preparing for the Olympics to represent Zimbabwe.

“I am just working with my coach from the UK, he is just sending me programmes on what to do and what not to do.”

The former Prince Edward School pupil said his stay in the UK helped him understand himself better and identify the areas he needs to work on.

“My coach said I didn’t have strength and speed endurance, so he started working on that.

“So it shows that the workouts I used to do here were more to do with just speed only, I didn’t deal with speed endurance and strength.

“When you are running 400m hurdles, it’s a race for stamina and you need to have strength and speed endurance.

“I am not saying that the training I was doing here was weak but I would like to say I only trained for a month when I was in England and I just started improving.

“I was happy with the way I was training and my programme had changed and I now understood my body as an athlete.

“If I have more time for base work, it’s easier for me to run fast times next year because I know I would have done proper base work with quality training and quality gym,” said Majuru.

Apart from the training programmes he is getting from Caines, he is also being helped by his former coaches David Tinago and Keegan Cooke. Majuru has dropped the 110m hurdles for now just to focus on the 400m and 400m hurdles.