IAAF offers Malawi first electronic timing course

International Athletics Associations Federation (IAAF) has accepted to fund  Athletics Association of Malawi’s (AAM) first-ever technical course in electronic timing within the year.

This follows a request AAM made to the world athletics governing body to equip local technical officials with knowledge in electronic timing to handle modern electronic timing gadgets at Bingu National Stadium (BNS) in Lilongwe.

AAM president Godfrey Phiri said the association wrote IAAF to offer training scholarship for two Malawian officials at Regional Development Centre in Kenya.

“IAAF responded favourably to the proposal but recommended that it should be held in the country to benefit more people rather than just two individuals,” he said.

Part of the letter from IAAF which Nation Online has seen, reads: “Congratulations for your new stadium. We can organise a mobile RDC in your country for more of your technical officials to benefit.”

Phiri applauded IAAF, saying the course is important as Malawi has only two technical officials who were trained to handle electronic timing.

“Following the positive response, we are currently working towards arrangements for the course as up to 50 people could benefit from it,” he said.

“We have many technical officials but they use manual timing because we did not have the machines which are expensive.”

During the official opening of BNS in February last year, officials panicked to identify qualified people to operate the electronic timing machine during athletics which was one of the activities to mark the official opening.

However, they breathed a sigh of relief after China, who provided funding for the modern stadium, offered technical officials who operated the machine.