Prudence Sekgodiso set for World Indoor Championship debut

The Indoor Champs are scheduled to take place in Nanjing, China, from  21-25 March, with Sekgodiso set to travel to Europe this week to compete in several indoor meetings to acclimatise. 

Coach Samuel Sepeng expressed confidence in her ability to perform well in her first indoor season, as they change their approach.

"Our approach for this year will be different from other years with Prudence – we're going to indoors for the first time ever, so we are approaching that with her first indoor race next week," said Sepeng.

"Obviously, if things go well, we want to try to do the World Indoor [Championships] as well. As you know, with Tshepo [Tshite], we do the Indoors as well, but this year we've decided not to do it.

"We will instead focus on local races and try to qualify for the World Championships in Tokyo – the earlier the better for us to get preparations moving forward, so just to manage the load as well."

Sepeng explained that participating in the indoor event is an opportunity to explore something new for both him and the athlete, who has already secured qualification for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan, this September. 

"Based on the right time, and I won't say it is the right time, we want to try something new – remember all these years our focus has been here at home, running our local races, and later we would move to Europe," he added.

"Looking at the years where we were chasing qualification, like last year we had to chase to qualify for the Olympics, and the previous year we were chasing to qualify for Budapest.

"So, this year we're taking a different approach where we have already qualified for the World Champs, so we don't need to panic on chasing the qualifying time, and so the indoor is a chance to try something new, with a different approach.

"We won't do the indoors at our peak, we'll approach the indoors the same as us competing in SA."

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