This will hopefully give local enough preparation time for international competitions. Instead of the usual January-December calendar, newly appointed NAAZ president, Tendai Tagara, revealed that the season would now run from October to May and allow locals to prepare for the world junior championships in July and the World Championships that follow later.
Apparently, the athletes have blamed their failure to win medals on a short training period. The national championships would now be held at the end of May to allow the picking of teams for the world championships and allow them enough time in camp before they go for international competitions.
Zimbabwe are yet to win an Olympic medal in athletics since admission to international sport in 1980. The closest locals have come to winning a medal at the Olympic Games was at the 2008 Games in Beijing, when long jumper, Ngoni Makusha finished fourth and lost out of a bronze medal by a centimetre to South Africa’s Khotso Mokoena.