Triathlon Zimbabwe bank on juniors ahead of Troutbeck Africa Cup

Triathlon Zimbabwe (TZ) is likely not going to field any elite athletes at this year’s Bonaqua Troutbeck Africa Triathlon Cup scheduled for early next month.

Preparations for the annual international event which is set to be staged on April 2 at the Troutbeck Resort are at an advanced stage.

However, event director Rick Fulton confirmed that for the second time in a row there will not be any have any local representation in the male elite category for the Africa Cup.

“I am not 100% sure if we will not have women representation in the elite race. I am not sure if Greer Wynn will be racing as an elite athlete, this is obviously something that needs to be raised with her. We certainly will not have any male elite representation unfortunately but we will have very good junior youth representation at the event,” Fulton said in an interview with ZimSportLive.

Veteran triathlete Wynn was the country’s only elite representative in the previous edition which was held in September last year and she finished third.

TZ is expecting a big number of elite athletes as well as juniors this time around considering that there is minimal threat of Covid restrictions and also that the event will culminate with the Africa junior development camp.

“We look forward to hosting more athletes from around Africa and hopefully further afield for the elite and the junior event. We are combining the event with an Africa junior development camp so this will bring a good level of elite junior talent also to the event which is great news and we have high expectations with our junior athletes and our youth athletes at the event,” he said.

Fulton gave an update on the preparations for the event which is a little over three weeks away.

“Our plans and preparations are well advanced and going very well. We are now almost one month away from the event and preparations are well advanced. It has not been a problem working on the event seeing that the last event was in only September last year. We basically started the process straight after the last event,” he said.