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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
FAILURE to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games by the country’s long-distance runners has been blamed on Covid-19 as athletes could not train or participate in competitions for almost a year.

Three of the country’s road-runners, Jonathan Chinyoka, Munyaradzi Jari and Fortunate Chidzivo failed to qualify for the Olympics in the last qualifying race, Retail Capital Langa Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa last Sunday.

Olympic marathon qualifying times are 2 hours 11 minutes and 30 seconds.

Fortunate Chidzivo finished the women’s race in 2 hours 35 minutes and 19 seconds, Munyaradzi Jari was fourth in a time of 2 hours 12 minutes and 27 seconds and Jonathan Chinyoka finished 15th in 2 hours 18 minutes and 35 seconds in the men’s race.

“Before blaming athletes and even the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz), we have to appreciate the fact that the Covid-19 pandemic had a big impact on teams and individual athletes. They were on the sidelines for a long time because of the global pandemic.

“If you may recall as Naaz we tried to use online platforms to conduct training sessions but our athletes had challenges with data and connectivity. As a country, we’re not technologically advanced but when the sport was given the green light to resume, we tried our best as Naaz to organise races so that our athletes could shake off the rust, ” said Lisimathi Phakamile, Naaz national director of coaching and talent identification development.

He added that Covid-19 also brought positives in the sense that injured athletes managed to recover and are back on track.

Naaz is now pinning its hopes on track and field athletes to qualify for the Olympics.

The deadline for track and field athletes to qualify for the Olympics is two weeks before the Games start.

Phakamile said Naaz hopes that more athletes will qualify for the World Junior Championships.

Two sprinters, Clinton Muunga of Matabeleland South and Samukeliso Ndebele from Matabeleland North have qualified for the World Junior Championships.

Also known as the World Athletics Under-20 Championships, the World Junior Championships will be held in Kenya from August 17-22.

Muunga and Ndebele qualified for the global juniors’ meet in the Naaz national championships held in Harare last week.

Muunga qualified for both the 100m and 200m races after running the races in 10.46 seconds and 21.21 seconds.

Qualifying ties for the junior men are 10.58 seconds for 100m and 21.38 seconds for 200m.

Ndebele qualified for the women’s 200m World Junior Championships finals in a time of 23.30 seconds. The standard qualifying time for the global Under-20 competition in the 200m women’s race is 24.35 seconds.

“The juniors still have at least a month and a half to qualify and most of them are closer to qualifying times. We are planning on having at least two races and some athletes are already planning on flying to South Africa for more races,” said Phakamile. — @ZililoR