Ngwigwa prepares for international glory

THATO KALA
Correspondent | Tuesday March 1, 2011 00:00

(The World Championships will run from August 27 to September 4, 2011 in Daegu, South Korea while the 10th All Africa Games take place from September 3-18, 2011 in Maputo, Mozambique). 'I finished my collegiate athletics career last year with University of South Carolina and right now I am just staying in the programme to finish up the last semester of my academics and train for the upcoming season,' said Ngwigwa.

The 25-year-old BSc (Computer Science) student wants to improve his personal best in the 400m and 200m.Ngwigwa admits qualifying for the World Championships will not be easy but he is prepared to work his socks off. 'My desire is to make it to the finals of the World Championships in the 400m and 4 x 4. Of course it won't be a walk in a park to achieve all these. It is going to require a lot of planning, preparation, hard work, determination and more and more training,' he said.

He is still under the tutelage of American coaches Kevin Brown and Curtis Frye. Ngwigwa is drawing inspiration from 2007 All Africa Games 400m gold medallist California Molefhe. The former rugby star wants to succeed Molefhe as the games' champion.

He had his first taste of international success when he won a bronze in the 400m at the 2004 World Junior Athletics Championships with a personal best and national junior record of 45.97 seconds.