JM Busha marathon postponed

THE National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe have postponed the JM Busha elite marathon pencilled for July 29 in Harare saying most of the targeted athletes are already preparing for the World Championships in London in August.

The global meet is scheduled for August 4 to 13 in London and with just a week separating the two events, NAAZ president Tendai Tagara yesterday announced that they have decided to postpone the race.

The JM Busha race was also expected to feature athletes from other African countries.

“The National Athletics Association of Zimbabwe would like to announce the postponement of the JM Busha Elite Marathon, which was pencilled for 29 July due to a number of factors.

“This is an elite marathon and we were expecting to invite international athletes across the continent with times of 2 hours 15 minutes for men and 2 hours 40 minutes for women.

“From the statistics, all these athletes will be running in London on the 6th of August. The World Championships takes precedence.

“At the recent regional meeting the concern was that not all the best (athletes) will be available because of the World Championships. Our target was to invite top 20 marathoners from each of the 15 regional countries,” said Tagara.

The NAAZ president said they will reconvene after the World Championships to come up with a new date, but will be guided by the IAAF calendar and the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races.

“We delayed to inform the public because we wanted to inform and convince the sponsor on this because preparations had started and was ready.

“After the World Championships we will reconvene and look at the Association of International Marathons (AIMS) calendar and see how we can get the best athletes even outside Africa.

“We will be guided by IAAF calendar and AIMS, of which we had registered, so they will guide us bearing in mind there are races like the New York City. But right now we are concentrating on the World Championships.

“It also gives our top runners that are going to the World Championships the opportunity to compete. We want this race to be a beacon of athletics performance and our athletes to qualify here,” Tagara said.

JM Busha 54 Races is a non-profit organisation involved in social investment programmes aimed at promoting sport, education and peace, stability, harmony and unity among people and nations.