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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
BULAWAYO Athletics Board (Bab) chairman Watson Madanyika says embracing technological advancement will be a big game changer for local athletics following the annual Econet Victoria Falls Marathon held virtually on Sunday.

This year’s event was held virtually due to movement restrictions imposed as part of measures to curb the spread of Covid-19.

The popular event, which draws thousands of local and international participants, traditionally takes place during the first week of July, but was postponed to December 13 following national lockdowns across the world as governments battled to contain the outbreak of the pandemic.

Bab has worked with Econet over the years and was part of Sunday’s historic event that saw athletes participating from different locations in the world.

About 5 500 people in Zimbabwe alone took part in the marathon, which used an interactive “live” tracking. The event organisers will release the results after they have been collated.

The SportSplits tracking app that the race organisers partnered with provided runners with a split screen, allowing them to track their run and see exactly where they would be had they been running the actual route in Victoria Falls.

It also provided voice updates of all places of interest on the actual Victoria Falls Marathon route, including water points.

The app immediately stopped tracking as soon as the runner had completed their registered distance and provided them with all stats, which included one’s pace.

Madanyika said Bab had learnt a lot of lessons from Sunday’s event, including the fact that staging a virtual marathon for an event as big as the Econet Victoria Falls Marathon is not easy, although technology makes it possible.

“In modern sport, investing in technology upgrades the standards of the sport. For this race, everything was digital from registration, confirmation, distribution of bib numbers and payment of race fees.

For Bab the biggest takeaway was that it is possible to have athletes participating in an event (road race) from different locations using various routes monitored by a tracking app with no challenges,” said Madanyika.

“Overall, the event went well and most students who got free vouchers participated and enjoyed the race. Plus or minus 1 000 runners participated in Bulawayo.

The communication came late but most of the athletes used the certified routes such as the PPC Matopos Ultra-Marathon and Old Mutual Nkulumane half marathon.

“We are also grateful to Tingamira for supporting the event by sponsoring water points that were dotted along established routes that most runners chose to take.

As Bulawayo Athletics Board, we thank Econet for giving students free vouchers to participate and also giving people a chance to exercise after a long break due to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown restrictions,” he said. – @innocentskizoe