men’s hockey team.
The funds will be channelled specifically towards the hockey team’s preparations for the Olympic Games qualifiers scheduled for September 2-11 in Bulawayo.
This is a bold step towards ensuring that Zimbabwe qualifies a team sport to the Olympics for the first time since 1980.
The support for hockey is being administered under the Olympic Solidarity Team Support grant.
Stanley Mutoya, the ZOC chief executive, said yesterday that the aim of this Team Support grant is to finance the preparation of the Zimbabwe men’s hockey team for the Africa Olympic qualifiers to be held this year.
“Of this funding, 27 percent will be channeled towards local national training camps with the remaining 73 percent reserved for the team’s participation in the Africa Olympic qualifiers,” Mutoya said.
Hockey was selected to benefit from this support in consistency with the ZOC Long Term Winning Strategy (LTWS) in which the sport of hockey is ranked first on the team sports priority list.
Through this strategy, ZOC will be channeling most of the resources towards those sporting disciplines that have the greatest potential for success with the rest of the sports benefiting to a lesser extent.
However, athletes that attain world class standards will still be eligible for support regardless of their sporting disciplines’ ranking on the ZOC priority list, Mutoya said.
The aim of the LTWS is to continuously churn out world class athletes by 2020 through a deliberate programme and develop a conveyor belt syndrome for producing world class athletes.
“This no doubt calls for a lot of support and co-operation from the respective National Sports Associations as it requires magnanimous and meticulous planning with religious adherence to the tenets, principles and basic fundamentals of scientific athlete and sport development practices.
“Hockey is one team sport that has great potential for success and therefore requires a lot of support. The sport regrettably is contending with fundamental challenges that are acting as formidable impediments chief among them being the unavailability of facilities,” Mutoya said.
The ZOC boss said such challenges no doubt heavily impede upon attempts to develop any sport, hockey included.
ZOC, however, acknowledges the Government’s commitment to reviving the sport as evidenced by the plans to refurbish the Khumalo Hockey Stadium in Bulawayo in time for the Africa Olympic Qualifiers in September this year.
The Africa Olympic qualifiers are going to be hosted in Bulawayo in view of the fact that the Olympic sport of hockey has not been included on the 2011 All-Africa Games competition programme due to lack of facilities in the host country, Mozambique.
As such, the African Hockey Federation, in consultation with the International Hockey Federation (FIH), sanctioned the hosting of the African Olympic qualifying competition in Bulawayo from September 2-11.
Both the African Hockey Federation and the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (Anoca) have since requested all National Olympic Committees to support and assist their National Hockey Federations and teams in preparing for and participating in the qualifying competition.
“The greater the number of well prepared teams participating at the qualifiers, the better the chances of a strong representation by Africa at the London 2012 Olympic Games as the qualifying teams will at that stage be playing an ambassadorial role on behalf of the entire continent.
“As such, the qualifying competition is an integral part of the preparations for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as an opportunity for the much needed exposure even for those teams that will not qualify as they will use the event as a launch pad for their 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games preparations,” Muyota said.
Zimbabwe’s qualification for the London 2012 Olympic Games in hockey will not by any shade of imagination be a stroll in the park, thus justifying the need for very thorough preparations.
Participation in the men’s and women’s tournaments of the Olympic hockey competition will be limited to 12 teams for each gender with each team being entitled to enter a maximum of 16 players.
The qualification criteria has already been laid down by the International Olympic Committee and the International Hockey Federation.
For the men’s competition, Great Britain has automatic qualification as the hosts and will be joined by the five winners in each of the continental qualifiers (16th Asian Games in Guangzhou, China; 13th European Nations Cup in Monchengladbach, Germany; African Olympic qualifiers, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe; 7th Oceania Cup for men, Hobart, Australia, and the 16th Pan American Games, Guadalajara, Mexico.

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