The organiser of the Navachab Half Marathon, Berthold Karumendu said he is happy with the return of the event following its two-year hiatus but bemoaned the challenges the race faces going forward.
Speaking to Nampa after the event in Karibib on Saturday, Karumendu said while he was happy with the number of entries received, the race still faces challenges like manual registration of athletes, manual timing and its inability to attract quality regional and international athletes.
“We need to get sponsors who can commit money to help us hire institutions who have digital technology to help us use scanners and timing. That will cost us between N.dollars 25 000 to N.dollars 30 000,” he said.
He also added that the Saturday race had to start a bit late as registration was ongoing until way past the envisaged start time because some regions like Erongo had arrived early that morning.
Karumendu said that all 14 regions participated in the event, noting that while he was happy with the turnout, he wished the race could be rated a Bronze Event by World Athletics. For that to happen, the prize money needs to be raised from the current N.dollars 7 000 to N.dollars 25 000 or more, he added.
“This would mean more sponsors have to come on board for us to have this kind of prize money. Once that is done, we will be able to attract top marathon runners from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) and the continent, which in turn will improve our marathon runners’ competitiveness,” he explained.
Karumendu paid tribute to the current sponsors saying the race is growing as evidenced by the increase of participants from 580 in 2019 to over 640 this year.
“The main issue is mass participation. You can have your elite athletes but the most important ones are the local communities who run for fun, for health reasons, those who use the event as a family bonding session and so on,” he explained saying this then markets marathon running to children who would have not been interested.
Paulus Daniel and Alina Armas were the senior men and women winners of this year’s event.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
