Sports Complex to turn into high performance centre

The College of Medicine’s Sports Complex has, with the blessings of the Sports Council and expertise of South Africa’s University of Pretoria, hatched an ambitious project to transform the Blantyre facility into a high performance centre.

High Performance Centres (HPCs) are catalysts for improved sports performance across the world. Once opened in Malawi, it will be one of the few in Africa and southern Africa. The University of Pretoria and another one in Kenya are among the few world-class high performance centres.

The complex’s manager Gus Banda said they would host a stakeholders’ symposium involving all sports council’s affiliates, physical education teachers, coaches, administrators and sports journalists to sell to them the importance of sports science which is at the core of the HPC.

“We want to challenge the sports fraternity that if they use our facility, we will up their performance. That will be the benchmark as we are target-oriented. We need the sports fraternity to have a better understanding of sports science; hence, the hosting of the symposium,” he explained.

A sports team of 25 athletes would pay K600 000 (about $2 400) to benefit from the HPC for a year, Banda said.

Malawi has over the years been sending to Kenya high performance centre athletes to prepare for major competitions such as the Olympic Games. Banda has helped improve the fitness of the Queens and the Flames.