US-BASED track and field rising sensation, Cloud Masibhera has a lot in common with his mentor Ngonidzashe Makusha – the highly regarded Zimbabwean Olympian, World Championships bronze medallist and national 100 metres and long jump record holder.
BY DANIEL NHAKANISO
For starters, they both had humble beginnings before moving to Churchill High School in Harare, where their long jump exploits earned them scholarships to study and further their track and field careers in the US.
Makusha went on to attain legendary status at Florida State University, winning countless individual titles and qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he came within a whisker of a medal for Zimbabwe in the long jump competition.
A historic bronze medal at the 2011 IAAF World Athletics Championships in Daegu, South Korea, was probably the highlight of Makusha’s career, which sadly never reached its full potential due to injuries.
Makusha has since turned to coaching and is now coach at Drake University, which last year signed up Masibhera and another promising Zimbabwean sprinter Kundai Maguranyanga (Pamushana High).
Just like his mentor Makusha, Masibhera, who won several local and regional titles before moving to the US, already looks well poised for a very successful college career. The 19-year-old enjoyed a winning debut for Drake University after producing a dominant performance in the long jump to win the Missouri Valley Conference title during the first day of the MVC Championships on February 24.
Masibhera’s mark of 8,25 metres was the best performance in the Missouri Valley Conference this season, the fifth-longest in college history and Drake’s first conference long jump title since 2009.
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Such has been Makusha’s positive influence on Masibhera that the teenage star is already dreaming of emulating his mentor by representing Zimbabwe at the Olympic Games in the future.
“Training under a former Olympian like Makusha is really hard work,” Masibhera told The Sports Hub in an interview from his US base.
“The workouts are hard, but at the same time in order to succeed we have to put in the hard work. I am really honoured to have this privilege to be training under someone like Makusha because he knows how much it takes to succeed and perform at the highest level.
“Well, my goal is to become a Zimbabwean Olympian, which I know takes a lot of determination and effort, but I really believe under coach Makusha I can make it. I do hope to emulate my coach one day, but I really want to do more than he did,” he said.
The first born in a family of five children, Makusha grew up in Harare’s high-density surburb of Glen View, where he had lived all his life before relocating to the US. A keen sportsman from a tender age, Masibhera’s first introduction to the sport was at the age of seven while at Southerton Primary School before moving to Churchill in 2012.
After proceeding at Churchill, Masibhera initially played basketball, volleyball and cricket which all later took second priority to rugby and athletics.
“I got fascinated by rugby so much I stopped playing all the other sports I was doing and I joined the rugby team and the athletics team because athletics was in the first term and rugby in the second term.
“During my first three years of high school I was more into rugby than athletics, but loved rugby more. Then in form 4, I stopped playing rugby because of final exams so I was just then doing athletics and that is when I was drafted into the Zimbabwe team to travel to Lesotho for the 2015 Cossasa (Confederation of Southern Africa Schools Sports Association) Track and Field Championships where I won gold in long jump and silver in triple jump.”
During his school career, Masibhera raked in an impressive local haul of 10 gold medals, eight silver medals and five bronze medals from the Zimbabwe Youth Games and the Nationals Athletics Championships from 2014 to 2017.
The highlight of his fledging career was when he won a gold and a silver in the long jump and triple jump respectively at the African Union Sports Council Region Five under-20 Youth Games in 2016. The games are currently underway in Luanda, Angola.
Although Masibhera continued to alternate between rugby and athletics throughout the final two years of high school, he says he eventually made the decision to concentrate on the latter.
“I used to strike a balance between both rugby and athletics because I had figured out that I was very good at both sports. In the end I had to pick one and I chose athletics even though I loved rugby more. In athletics there were a lot of opportunities for me to go forward than rugby,” he said.
The decision paid off when Churchill sports director and athletics coach Wellington Zingwe linked him up with Makusha, who later facilitated his move to Drake University, which could prove to be his springboard to the international athletics scene.
