THE Zambia Athletics (ZA) says the poor performance of Zambian Athletes at the ongoing Confederation of African Athletics Under-18 and Under-20 championship is due to lack of adequate preparations.
ZA president Elias Mpondela said his Association had a challenge to prepare the athletes for the home games taking place in Ndola because most of the athletes were busy with school.
Mpondela also noted that luck of investment in athletics in the past has also been the reason to why Zambian athletes have struggled with only two medals after day two of the games.
Mpondela said countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Kunya who have dominated the youth games in Ndola have invested massively in sport which is deemed as an economic driver.
“Countries that are doing well are countries that see sports as an economic driver. They already identified that the sport of athletics is an industry, an economic driver and they have been investing in it so you don’t get results when you don’t spend. We are now being helped and you know athletics is different from other sports. It’s a scientific sport where reading of play does not occur in one day or in two months,” Mpondela said.
“As an association I think we are challenged that we must do better. Government had that view that’s we must camp the athletes for two months but it was challenging because most of the athletes were in school and we started training them from their bases so that also created a little bit of a challenge,” he said.
“I think we are increasingly coming up because every popular sport starts on a smaller trajectory and to be given to host this tournament… There were countries calling requesting to host. What we are learning from this is that this things championship is good and we must do better in older for us to do better,” he said.
“So far it is the interest that we are created in these young people. We have been used to running instead exposing many to start competitive competitions so the start of the past two days, yesterday we did well and today’s we so athlete going to the semifinals and we have medals in 400 and 100 meters and we can see that things are showing and we are challenged as an association that we need to step up our game for us to continue getting the countries support. It is now our responsibility and not governments responsibility,” Mpondela said.
Mpondela who is the chairman of the Local Organising Committee admitted that information flow has been poor at the games in Ndola due to some technical challenges.
“For us we have admitted that information flow has been poor and we have learnt something. Tomorrow we should see something deferent. Same with electronic time system it is a very complicated system but I hope that things will be better,” Mpondela said.
On the Ethiopian team that had issues with accommodation Mpondela said that team Ethiopia had challenges with accommodation because the number of athletes who came for the tournament in Ndola was more than the number of athletes who were registered for the games.
Mpondela said the situation was resolved before the games started and everything is going smoothly.
He said the influx of people to the Copperbelt for Kitwe derby contributed to the challenge of accommodation for the over 700 athletes from 53 countries.
