Go Tanzanian athletes, You can take on world

After months of preparations, the stage is now set for the 14th IAAF World Championship which roars into life today at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia.

It’s the world’s biggest athletics championship where the crème of runners from around the world battle it out for top honours in different track and field disciplines.

In Tanzania, there have been calls by the government and other stakeholders that the athletes making up the national team should restore the country’s pride by making a mark at the championship, which will end on 18 August.

This mirrors the weight of expectations that the runners carry on their shoulders when they represent Tanzania in the Moscow event with an eye set on the global championship. Tanzania has fielded two long distance runners in the event.

It might be the leanest squad we have presented at recent high-profile competitions, but we believe it’s also the best. Tanzanians’ hopes for medals at the event now rest on the shoulders of Faustine Mussa and Mohamed Msenduki.

They are eyeing to emulate Chistopher Isegwe who defied the odds to win a silver medal in the men’s Marathon at the 2005 championship in Helsinki.

It was the first medal for Tanzania in the championship’s history. This year’s event is the first of a series of high-profile international sporting events to be held in Russia in the coming years, and the biggest competition in Moscow since the 1980 Olympics.

In February next year, the Black Sea resort of Sochi expects to host the Winter Olympics, while the most-watched sports event in the world -- the Fifa World Cup -- comes to Russia in 2018. We hope that the commendable job done by Tanzania’s technical bench in polishing the athletes will bear fruit, and they will return home triumphant, flying the national flag high.