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Harare Bureau
THE national track and field meet returns to Harare this Sunday with the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe looking at checking the preparedness of their technical officials ahead of upcoming regional competitions they will host.  

The event will be held at the National Sports Stadium B Arena.

The competition is serving as a rehearsal for the upcoming Cossasa Championships to be hosted at the same venue next week, the JM Busha marathon as well as the triangular series finals on May 25 and the Southern Region Senior Championships in June. National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe vice-president development, Enias Nhoro, said they want to ensure local officials who will officiate in the regional competitions are up to the task.

“For a competition to be successful, it should be determined by officials, if they are not up to scratch we do not meet the standard. But if they are up to scratch the organisation of the event will be okay and athletes can perform to their best.

“So we are looking particularly at the interpretation of the rules and reaction to situations during competition, to say is this the required reaction after an infringement. We also want to see the way they interpret the IAAF rules in a competition under pressure. We want to guard against any flaws.

“Actually as we are doing this, after the competition we will gather all officials to just have their input on what they would have seen, their observations. So that we deal with any challenges before the real competition,” said Nhoro.

The regional championships are penciled for June 11 to 14 at the National Sports Stadium.

Harare Athletics Board secretary-general, Silas Muringani, said they are taking advantage of the event to select their provincial team to fight for honours in the inter-provincial championships on May 13 and 14,

“This competition has got some targets. We are using it to select our provincial team for the inter-provincials on the 13th and 14th of May.

“Besides the inter-provincials we want to finalise our team for the National Youth Games as well. For us as a province it’s also a rehearsal in terms of our technical officials’ preparedness when we host the inter-provincials.

“So we just want to see how prepared we are in terms of our officials, remember we provide most of the officials, so they will be under the scrutiny of vice president Nhoro,” said Muringani.

Muringani, who is also the national director in charge of junior development added that Sunday’s event presents those chasing qualification for the African Junior Championships with a chance to prepare.