Ex-sprint queen, now grooming stars

Fungai Muderere, Senior Sports Reporter

“START young and retire young” is her inspiring motto and she says it was no wonder that at the age of 30, after representing the country so well at various athletics competitions, she decided to call it a day.

Such is the story of Bulawayo-bred former Zimbabwe sprint Queen Faith Dube, an athletics empress who over the years conquered the track and on stage while taking part in bodybuilding fitness modeling contests.

Dube, who in 2018 beat Kylie McDonald and Sinini Nxumalo to walk away with the top prize in Miss Bulawayo, now a holder of National Level One (2020), World Athletics International Level Two (2021) and World Athletics International Level Two (2022) coaching certificates is now a personal and national athletics coach.

The former 200m and 400m, 4x100m relay country’s representative at Confederation of University and College Sport Association (CUCSA) held in Botswana in 2018 where she scooped three silver medals for Team Zimbabwe in all the events, was the youngest national team coach at the 2022 African Union Region Five Games that were hosted by Malawi.

Other coaches included celebrated former Zimbabwe long distance runner Cuthbert Nyasango, Tumba Mavhuto and Patience Mukaro among others.

“I retired in 2020. The zeal to start coaching at a tender age and the need to concentrate on other life commitments forced me to retire. I am happy that I have also managed to acquire coaching certificates which all required me to be a practising coach and an energetic mentor,” she said.

She is the brains behind Bulawayo based Trackbae Fitness stable where she has been coaching a number of elite athletes that include Denzel Simusiyalela , Privilege Bower, Calton Siwela, Ronald Muchichwa, Samkeliso Ndebele and Chukwuemeka Nnam among others.

From these six, Simusiyalela, Bower, Siwela and Ndebele were part of Team Zimbabwe at the 2022 African Union Region Five Games.

“Trackbae Fitness started with the recruitment of ladies who wanted to be healthy and fit. Later on, we got athletes. I have been training a number of athletes and I was so happy to see four of them making it to the AUSC Region 5 Games national team. As Trackbae Fitness, we do our strengthening workouts at Dynamics Gym and track workouts at National University of Science and Technology. I am a full time personal athletics coach. Mine is a 6am to 6pm job,” said Dube, a former Zimbabwe Power Company attaché who got her first gold medal in 2014 at the Zesa Sports Festival.

Asked on how she has been handling pressure in this male dominated industry, the former Eveline High School student, who aside from being a renowned former sprinter, bodybuilder and now a personal and athletics coach, secured a National Diploma in Electrical Power Engineering at Bulawayo Polytechnic College in May 2018, also works with Bulawayo based private academic institution Carmel Primary School as their athletics coach.

“Personal and athletics coach is male dominated, it is quite challenging but with passion, I find it so easy. You need to be a fully trained person so that you don’t find yourself wanting and while I’m so proud of being a national team coach, the youngest, I must say I really enjoy working with young athletes. I want to work with more junior schools. I believe if you develop talent at an early age, you would have developed the country.” 

She added: “In the next five years, I want to see myself coaching internationally and having athletes qualify for the Olympics and other more prestigious events. With so much talent around, lack of resources has proved to be detrimental. However, if we do happen to get enough support, Bulawayo will shine not only in football.”

While she is grateful to her supportive family members, Dube, who is not married, said against a background of the fact that the local athletics season now on and with most of her athletes coming from not so well up families, she was appealing for sponsorship that will help them take part in international events and in the process gain the much needed exposure. – @FungaiMuderere

Article Source: The Chronicle