Tanzania names eight athletes for GROE marathon

Eight runners will represent Tanzania in the fourth series of the Greatest Race on the Earth (GROE) marathons which start tomorrow in Nairobi, Kenya.

Other races will be staged in Singapore on December 2, Mumbai (January 20) and Hong Kong (February 17) next year.
The runners will be sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank.

The bank`s acting chief executive officer named the runners as Bosia Duwe, Francis Naali, Daniel Samuni, Paul Sumaye, Sara Majah, Banuela Katesigwa, Tea Anthony and Fabiola William.

The Minister for Information Culture and Sports, Muhammed Seif Khatib, urged local athletes to perform well in the launching of the event held in Dar es Salaam yesterday.
`We want them to win in these races,` the minister said.

He said he did not see any good reasons why Tanzanians should be defeated in the marathon everyday by their neigbouring countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia while they were in the same region.

The minister said Tanzania had a lot of talents in sports that needed to be nurtured. `This is the right time to develop our runners,` he added.

On his part, Athletics Tanzania (AT) Secretary-General Suleiman Nyambui said his body would support the runners wherever they would get stuck.

GROE has been divided into six regions - Africa, South East Asia, North East Asia, Americas, Europe and Oceania, South Asia and Middle East.