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Ricky Zililo, Senior Sports Reporter
SPRINTER Ngoni Makusha carries the National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe (Naaz)’s last hopes for a Zimbabwean athlete to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic Games that start next month.

Makusha, who set up a temporary base in South Africa a few months ago, is hoping to secure a ticket for the Games at the Gauteng provincial championships that end on June 29, a day before the Olympic qualification deadline.

Naaz president Tendai Tagara said athletes based in the United States of America, Chengetayi Mapaya, Tinotenda Matiyenga and Kundai Maguranyanga and the United Kingdom-based Tatenda Tsumba have all been hit by injuries thereby ruling them out of the remaining qualification events.

Zimbabwe’s triple jump record holder Mapaya’s Olympic qualification dream collapsed last week after he sustained a hamstring injury during the US National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Track and Field Championships.

Mapaya, who broke the 23-year-old record of 16,89m previously held by Ndabezinhle Mdlongwa when he jumped 16,95m in March, saw his season ending prematurely after pulling a hamstring when trying to take a step soon after taking a huge hop.

A student at Texas Christian University, Mapaya held Naaz’s biggest hopes of qualification for the Games because of the form he had been in this year that saw him shattering Mdlongwa’s longstanding record.

All Zimbabwe’s middle and long-distance runners failed to qualify for the global showpiece despite participating in a number of qualifying events.

Tagara said Matiyenga and Maguranyanga had notified Naaz’s national director of coaching and talent identification development Lisimathi Phakamile about their injuries.

“Mapaya is out of the Olympic qualifiers and it’s so disappointing because we were confident that he would qualify for the Tokyo Games.

He sent us a video that showed him picking up a terrible hamstring injury in the college competitions and we wish him a speedy recovery,” said Tagara.

“Tsumba communicated that his season was now over due to Covid-19 disruptions. He said it’s better for him to focus on next season.

There are also a number of athletes that have decided to rest and wait for the next athletics season because of intermittent Covid-19 disruptions,” Tagara said.

Failure by the country’s track and field athletes to qualify for the Games has exposed serious weaknesses in the country’s athletics programmes.

The Olympics should have been held in July last year but no athlete had qualified when Government suspended all sporting activities as part of measures to curb the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of March last year.