Zimbabwean physio Gareth Ziyambi leads Great Britain to Olympics glory

By Keith Mlauzi | Nehanda Sports |

While Zimbabwe’s swimming team barely lasted at the just ended Tokyo Olympics, a fellow Zimbabwean Gareth Ziyambi led the British diving team to medal victories.

Gareth, who is son to retired Supreme Court judge, Justice Vernanda Ziyambi, is the physiotherapist for Britain’s diving team and for the whole of Great Britain’s Olympics team which managed to scoop several medals at the Tokyo Olympics.

Ziyambi is a founder of A2Z Elite Health & Performance and has worked in elite sport for 13 years taking care of Olympians and world champions including Tom Daley and Matty Lee.

Speaking to a British publication Ziyambi answered several questions including how he keeps athletes gold-medal fit.

He said, “Over the years I have changed my priority from preparing to compete, to preparing to train. The ability to maintain the training as long as possible is the most important factor in a technical sport like diving where repetition is necessary to master the difficult manoeuvres under the pressure of Olympics competition.

“The key is to define what a gold medal performance actually is in terms of the scores, the degree of difficulty needed to achieve those scores, and what the opposition is doing. We are very fortunate in our team that we have both Olympic and World Champions so we have not had to look far to see what the best in the world looks like.”

At the Olympics Zimbabweans thrived to make it to the next round but failed. Swimming sensation Danai Katai together with sprinter Ngoni Makusha bowed out of the games last week. Nehanda Radio