The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Kusema
TEAM ZIMBABWE chef de mission Titus Zvomuya is a man brimming with confidence. The Zimbabwe Olympic Committee board member was due to fly out to Brazil with chief medical officer Kenneth Austin Jeans as the country’s advance delegation tasked with finalising the team’s logistics at the 2016 Rio Games Village.
The first batch of Zimbabwe’s contingent, which will mostly comprise locally-based athletes and officials, is expected to leave for Rio tomorrow though the Mighty Warriors will likely leave on Tuesday.
Zvomuya reckons the country has a very competitive team that should perform better than what was seen at London 2012.
“We do not want to put any athlete under unnecessary pressure and talk about medal hopefuls; but we have a very competitive team and we should come back home with more medals than before,” he said.
“We are sending one of our largest contingents to the Games, and solely based on the numbers, this should increase our chances of success.
“I would also like to highlight that the preparations process has improved as compared to the previous editions. This time around a number of our key stakeholders, the Ministry of Sport included, really stepped up and helped us, especially during the last couple of months.
“The Mighty Warriors, who haven’t had the best of preparations since they qualified, were finally able to hold a camp and train as a team,” he said.
The veteran administrator also spoke of his role as Team Zimbabwe chef de mission to Rio.
“I must say I have received a lot of support from the previous chefs de mission, among them the likes of Robert Mutsauki, Busi Chindove and Admire Masenda,” he said. “I have gone through their reports, from previous Olympics, and made sure that the recommendations that they made were implemented in as far as these particular Games are concerned.
“I have also made full use of our discussions, both formal and informal, just to make sure that I will be prepared for some of the challenges that they faced.
“Everything is in place for a very successful and, hopefully, incident-free Olympics.
The Zika virus is not even an issue because we have done everything humanly possible to try prepare ourselves for anything that may come our way.”
