YOUNG female motocross rider Tanya Muzinda (pictured right)has been nominated for the Junior Sportswoman of the Year award in the prestigious African Union Sports Council Region Five Regional Annual Sports Awards to be held at the Birchwood Hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa, later this month.
BY SPORTS REPORTER
While winners at country level are automatically entered as Region Five Regional Annual Sports Awards nominees, Muzinda was nominated for the award by virtue of being named Junior Sportswoman of the Year during the local Annual National Sports Awards (Ansa) last year.
Muzinda, who started racing at the age of five and is the first female to have won a motocross championship in Zimbabwe, features among a group of six Zimbabwean athletes who will be up for accolades during the regional awards banquet.
Others include karateka Samson Muripo, bodybuilder Helen Costa Sinclair, wheelchair racers Margaret Bangajena and Elford Moyo, while Zimbabwe’s Rugby Sevens side are up for the Sports Team of the Year.
Muripo was crowned Sportsperson of the Year in the 2017 Ansa Awards while Sinclair won Sportswoman of the Year with the wheelchair racing duo of Bangajena and Moyo scooping Sportswoman of the Year with a Disability and Sportsman of the Year with a Disability respectively.
The Zimbabwean athletes will be hoping to emulate retired swimming legend Kirsty Coventry, who was crowned Sportswoman of the Year at the inaugural regional awards in 2016, when they battle it out with other nominees from the region.
In a press statement released by the AUSC Region Five yesterday, chief executive Stanley Mutoya said he was excited to see the RASA brand growing since the inaugural edition in 2016.
