Tirivashe Nheweyembwa
Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Senior Sports Reporter
PREPARATIONS for the seventh edition of the African Union Sports Council Region 5 Under-20 Youth Games have begun in earnest with Zimbabwe having sent the list of participants to organisers of the event in Luanda, Angola.
The three-week games will be held in Luanda from the first week of December and Zimbabwe, who played host to one of the most successful games in the history of Region 5 sport in 2014, are confident of an even better performance.
“In all editions of the games that we have participated in, we have always been second out of the 10 Southern African countries except in 2012 when we were eighth in Zambia. This was to do with the size of the team delegation that we had in Lusaka comprising 53 athletes and officials. This implied that we were highly depleted in most of the sporting disciplines, especially the individual sports where most of the medals come from,” said Sports and Recreation Commission spokesperson Tirivashe Nheweyembwa.
Team Zimbabwe was second with a total of 18 gold medals of which 12 were from athletics in 2014.
“This year, the expectations are even higher given the early preparations,” said Nheweyembwa.
Zimbabwe will field participates in Athletics, Athletics for the visually impaired, basketball, boxing, Judo, Gymnastics, Netball, Swimming and Tennis.
The games, which are the brain child of the African Union Sports Council Region 5, were first held in the Mozambican capital Maputo in 2004 and Zimbabwe has participated in all editions of the biennial games since their inception.
