Top athletes shape up for Rendezvous

RWANDA’s elite athletics- Dieudonné Disi, Godfrey Rutayisire, Sylvain Rukundo and Jean Baptiste Simukeka are putting final touches in their speed ahead of the National Rendezvous championship scheduled for this weekend at Amahoro national stadium. Rendezvous National, is the final event on this year’s athletics calendar, and is expected to attract over 400 hundred athletes from across the country. Disciplines to be competed in range from 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500, 5000m, 10,000m, short and long relays, Short Put, Javelin and Discus among others. Italy based Rukundo and Simukeka have been training here for the last four weeks, while Disi, who is based in France has also spent the last 14 days in intensive training for the two day event which will attract participants from the Military, Police, civilians and students. Though he is currently Rwanda’s top athlete, Disi is expecting stiff competition from local athletes. “This year’s competition will be much harder to win because of the increased local talent. “I have been training with them for the past few days and I think there will be much competition during this time round,” the Franco-phone Games double gold medalist admitted yesterday. However, the national athletics federation (RAF) has not yet made public the prizes for the winners. The Executive Secretary of RAF, Constance Twagiramahoro told Times Sport that the federation is yet to get money from the Sports Ministry, which means they cannot determine how much prize money will be given to the winners. “Our major sponsors, who are the Ministry of Sports have not yet given us the money we requested, so at the moment we can’t determine how much we will have for the prizes,” Twagiramahoro said. CNLG, the national commission for the fight against Genocide are the other sponsors of the two-day event. Ends