NINE Zimbabwe Table Tennis players left the country yesterday for a vital and yet ground-breaking month-long training programme in China, which seeks to groom the national team players into possible podium finishers on the international stage.
The training programme is an initiative between the Zimbabwe Table Tennis Union and the Chinese government through their Harare embassy.
ZTTU president Noah Ferenando told Zimpapers Sports yesterday that the move to set base in China was part of his union's long-term athlete development programme.
"We are very excited that we have dispatched nine athletes and one coach for a month-long training programme in China where we aim to develop these athletes in line with our mandate of a Long-Term Athlete Development Pro-gramme," said Ferenando.
The ZTTU president added that their partnership with the Chinese seeks to develop athletes who can compete and win medals during international matches.
"We have benefited a lot from the Chinese community and the Embassy of China as they allowed us to groom our athletes to be podium athletes.
"Our players have been going out and have engaged with the Chinese community and this has brought a lot of positive impact," he said.
Ferenando said the ZTTU's recent successes in continental and regional tournaments bore testimony of the fruits they are reaping from working with the Chinese.
"Recently we had a team that went to CUCSA games, returned with gold, and in the African Championships for the first time, the juniors scooped a bronze medal.
"Getting a podium finish is the yardstick of measure that we use when we send our athletes to training programmes of this magnitude and we are happy that the partnership we have had the results for everyone to see," Ferenando.
The programme started four years ago and is part of a 10-year ZTTU development programme.
"We started this journey four years ago and we hope that in the 10 years running we will have a proper Long Term Athlete Development Programme where are our athletes start yielding results but we are happy that we are already seeing the results as the teams are doing well on the regional and continental competitions," said Ferenando.
