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Geophrey Sifani Sports Reporter
THE Bulawayo Athletics Board (BAB) season started yesterday with a refresher workshop for technical officials ahead of competitions that kick off at White City Stadium next weekend.

About 55 technical supervisors, including Physical Education teachers and coaches attended the recap clinic.

Areas covered by the refresher course were the role of a technical official, how to organise competitions, how to measure jumps, the athletics code of conduct and the use of the call room.

BAB chairman Manuel Mpofu said the course was necessary to equip the technical managers with the latest trends and information in athletics.

“Athletics is ever changing and there’s need for the managers to be in constant recap of what they know. In this way, we’ll instil a sense of professionalism and maintain an international standard of competitions. There’s no compromise and thus we want to equip the officials with adequate information to make Bulawayo a yardstick for the sport locally,” said Mpofu.

“We want to have many such courses before any competitions so that we’ve adequately trained personnel to improve the standard of track and field judges.”

Mpofu said preparations for next week’s cross country and track and field events were underway and Bulawayo would be using such events to prepare for the national championships.

He said they had written to the Ministry of Sport and Recreation requesting the use of athletics gear from the Region 5 Youth Games and were waiting for a response.

“This equipment will help us and the coaches to ensure the judging system is fairly done,” he said.

BAB will hold an open cross country race at Nketa Park in Mpopoma on January 16 and the winners will represent Bulawayo in the provincial cross country championships to be held later this month. Track and field events will be held on January 17 at White City Stadium.