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Ellina Mhlanga, Harare Bureau

ATHLETICS coach, David Tinago, believes they are now in a good position to try and qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

They begin the competition phase with two competitions in South Africa. 

Tinago is one of the coaches who have been working with locally based athletes in their build-up to try and qualify for the Games.

And five of them — Ngoni Makusha, Dickson Kamungeremu, Tatenda Tsumba, Itayi Vambe and Dickson Kapandura — are in South Africa for the ACNW Track and Field.

The events are set for February 15 in Potchefstroom and the AGN League Track and Field is slated for February 25 in Pretoria. 

The five are being supported by the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee and National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe since they are some of the athletes earmarked for qualification to the Games. 

Tinago said, for now, they were concentrating on individual events, which will increase their chances of performing better with the 4x100m relay team. 

“The 4x100m will not be competing. We are focusing on individual races as we are looking for them to qualify also for individual races.

“This will give them a boost for the 4x100m.

“Right now we are focusing on the more technical areas for each athlete and also focusing on our race strategies. 

“But our main focus will be the last meet as it will be more competitive and also we would have had a good build-up to both training and competition,” said Tinago.

The athletes are going to compete in 100m and 200m races. 

They spent a month at a High Performance Centre in South Africa between December and January and continued with their training programme in Harare when they returned home.

“The athletes are prepared and they have been building up towards the meets and also we are now getting into the competition phases where much focus will be on competitions. 

“They are in shape to hit the qualifying times on a good day,” Tinago said. 

Long distance runners such as Rutendo Nyahora and Munyaradzi Jari are also vying for qualification. 

The NAAZ president, Tendai Tagara, said they have a number of competitions they were targeting to try and provide the opportunity for the athletes to qualify. 

“These are athletes we are targeting, we are supporting them with food, accommodation, meals and training facilities only.

“The competitions are competitive in terms of the quality of participants. They will go back in March and April.

“At least, two must qualify in this first window, so that after April they concentrate on sharpening preparations,” Tagara said.