NAAZ gear for World Cross Country Champs

THE NATIONAL Athletics Association of Zimbabwe are this week expected to finalise their representatives for the forthcoming World Cross Country Championships to be staged in Belgrade, Serbia.

The championships are set for March 30. The national association had hoped for some of the athletes to cut the National Cross Country Championships held at Alan Lowry Golf Club, Redcliff recently.

NAAZ set its qualifying standards to select athletes for the upcoming competition.

NAAZ president Tendayi Tagara said the move was meant to encourage athletes to push for fast times so that they become competitive at international events.

“We set our standards so that our athletes if they go, they are competitive. But if they don’t meet the times, then we just send representatives.

“Our senior men and women failed to run the set qualifying times. We had one junior girl who ran 23 minutes and the qualifying time is 24 minutes.

“There was a good turn up of juniors, very encouraging for the future. But we had limited senior women and men,” said Tagara.

Senior men and women were chasing 29 minutes and 34 minutes respectively in 10km.

Under-20 men were expected to run 25 minutes for the 8km race and Under-20 women’s 6km race, the qualifying time was 24 minutes.

However, most of the athletes missed the times with only Previous Munsaka running the qualifying time in the Under-20 women when coming first in 23 minutes 36.52 seconds.

Tagara said they are now going to look at some of the seniors with close times to what they were targeting.

“We will look at one senior man and one senior woman and the junior girl. The competition was good but you find that for senior women it was not competitive, it lacked athletes. The majority went to Kazungula where there was money. They need money to take care of themselves at the end of the day and they are well in Kazungula.

“So by the end of this week, we should have decided on who is travelling (for the World Cross Country Champion-ships). We will look at the times and how close they are to the times that we set. We don’t want to just send people, we want them to be competitive,” said Tagara.

Wellington Varevi won the senior men’s category in 31 minutes 14 seconds while the women’s title went to Miriam Sibanda, who crossed the finish line in 40 minutes 52.93 seconds.

Andrew Ndhlovu came first in the Under-20 men in 26 minutes 13.21 seconds.