THE ZIMBABWE Olympic Committee (Zoc) are not amused with the way preparations of the national women’s soccer team are going for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August.

While Zoc are impressed with the cooperation they have been getting from the national associations whose athletes have qualified for the Summer Games for Team Zimbabwe, Zoc chief executive, Anna Mguni, believes more could have been done to prepare the team sport for the challenge lying ahead.

Zimbabwe will this year have a team sport competing at the Rio Games in the form of the Mighty Warriors, who qualified for the global sporting showcase in October last year.

“Let’s look at certain aspects of the team and be absolutely specific. Let’s look at the team sport specifically and look at things like strength and conditioning. It’s compared to the athletes that we have in terms of their strength and their conditioning in light of the competition that they are going to be facing.

“Are we matching or anywhere near the opposition we are going to be facing and we know how difficult that is. What are we doing to improve that?

“Look at the exposure and experience. The teams that we are going to play against play consistently in local leagues, in continental leagues. We don’t even have a local league running at the moment. So what are our athletes doing, they are not training at the moment.

“Issues to do with nutrition, diet, making sure that injuries are managed, there is rehabilitation, we are on totally different levels all together. So it makes things very difficult,” said Mguni.

This is the first time any football team from this country has qualified for the Olympic Games. And in as much as the nation celebrated the team’s qualification, it is their state of preparedness for the Games that is worrying with just two months to go before the Games.

Zimbabwe are in Group F together with Germany, Australia and Canada.

They have so far played a friendly game against South Africa’s Banyana Banyana as part of their preparations specifically for the Rio Games.

Early this year they were competing in the Africa Women Cup of Nations qualifiers where they played Tanzania and Zambia to book their place at the finals to be held later this year in Cameroon.

But the Zoc chief executive said the responsible association (Zifa) has to play its role in ensuring that the team is ready for the Rio Games.

“This is not the expectation that’s on the Zoc, this is the day to day business of the national association because that’s their responsibility with national teams. Because the team is called national does not mean the government of Zimbabwe should be doing the work, that’s the job of the national association.

“That’s why they are called a national association. And this is where we sometimes have challenges to say do we understand what we are meant to be focusing on especially with these teams that are representing us at this level.

“We are going to be starting at the same starting line but another team, one of the athletes is much bigger, stronger, faster, has had more experience than we have. So we are not going to come off first, we are going to come off second best. Definitely there will be a challenge there,” said Mguni.

The Mighty Warriors were in camp for two weeks early May, when they travelled to South Africa for a friendly match which they lost 0-1 with Zoc catering for the airfares for that trip.

And Zifa indicated that the team was just taking a short break before they resume training on dates to be announced and so far nothing has been said concerning the team’s preparations.

Earlier on in April the national football association revealed that they had engaged Sweden and New Zealand for friendly matches.

Zifa spokesperson, Xolisani Gwesela, yesterday said they will only be able to give an update on the Mighty Warriors preparations next week after the Warriors match against Malawi on Sunday.

South Africa is the other representative for Africa at this year’s Rio Games and they are currently in the Netherlands for two friendly matches on June 4 and 7.

They are scheduled to take on World Champions US on July 9 in another high profile friendly match ahead of theur participation at the Rio Games.