After persistent failures in international meets, the Athletics Tanzania’s (AT) secretary general, Suleiman Nyambui, has made a call to the country’s athletes to set up strategies ahead of any competition.

Nyambui urged them to become ambitious so as to excel in competitions. He noted that the failures they happen to experience frequently have been resulting out of poor strategies and lack of ambition to shine.

“Only very few athletes aims to earn a living through athletics while majority are in the game just for fun,” said Nyambui.

Nyambui said good performance would attract sponsorship from commercial firms that would like to exploit exposure through them at international stage.

He said athletes are capable of hooking big international firms should they perform well in high profile championships.

He said almost athletes from all over the country have confirmed to compete in the next month’s championship to be staged in Dar es Salaam.

The response to turn up at the national event has been buoyed by the fact that most of the athletes are eyeing to win selection for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

The AT official said negotiations to hook a sponsor for the event are close to an end.

"The Government and other firms that would support us are expecting you to excel at international stage," said Nyambui.