Tanzania: At Happy With Stadium’s Training Equipments

Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

31 May 2011

ATHLETICS Tanzania (AT) said the national team athletes are responding positively and seem to enjoy every bit of their training, ahead of the East and Central Africa championship from June 3 to 5 that Tanzania will host.

AT General Secretary Suleiman Nyambui told the ‘Daily News’ on Tuesday that athletes have been impressed and praised the government for allowing them to use the ultra modern athletics equipments that have been fixed at the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam.

“The Chinese have set up the Olympic Standard athletics facilities at the National Stadium and our athletes are enjoying the stint. We hope that such a conducive training environment will help them a great deal to mint medals for the country,” said Nyambui.

He said the national team athletes are training twice daily at the ultra modern sport complex adding that they are ready for the battle against the best from such nations like Kenya and Ethiopia.

Nyambui, the former 5,000 Olympic silver medalists remained optimistic that the local runners will perform better this time compared to last year when the country athletes failed miserably in the regional youth championships staged at the same venue.

Nyambui said the country failed last year because most of the junior runners were not comfortable with the stadium’s facilities. He bemoaned that the juniours were not afforded such time to train with the highly sophisticated equipments as is the case this time around.

Nyambui said Sudan and Djibouti teams were expected in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday night with a total of 23 runners in both track and field events.

He said Uganda and Kenya athletes are scheduled to jet in today evening, while the Rwandese and Zanzibar athletes are listed to arrive in Dar es Salaam on Thursday.

However, Nyambui said AT runs short of funds to successfully stage the event, saying so far they have raised 29m/- out of the budgeted 100m/- needed to smoothly stage the tournament. He called upon the well wishers to come forward and support the event which the country is hosting after 39 years.

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