Kirsty names African Games chef de mission

MINISTER of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Kirsty Coventry yesterday said Government will leave no stone unturned in their preparations for the Africa Games after appointing seasoned administrator Eugenia Chidhakwa to be the chef de-mission for Team Zimbabwe.

Chidhakwa, who is a director in the Ministry of Sport, will be assisted by Martin Dururu from the Sports Commission on the technical side and Memory Pakati from the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee from the administrative side.

The Games will take place this August in Morocco with more than 5 000 professional and amateur athletes competing in 27 sport codes.

The Games are run by Africa Union with the support of Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa.

The Africa Games will also be used as a qualifying event for the 2020 Olympics.

“We know that these are very important Games for not just the country but for the continent and for many of our sports associations and the athletes and we believe that we have put together a very capable team.

“We felt it is extremely important that we have all three of our major stakeholders in sport leading this Team Zimbabwe,’’ said Coventry.

“We have the Ministry, SRC and ZOC all represented and our team is in capable hands.

“There is going to be a total of 27 sports codes taking part in Morocco and 17 of those sport codes will be qualifying events for the Tokyo 2020 Games.

“We know that the process for the Tokyo Olympic Games 2020 has already started for many athletes. They are already training hard and this is another step closer.’’