Cooke became Zimbabwe’s record holder in April 2012 when he broke a previous 23-year-old record that had been set by Stan Flowers.
“I am impressed with Cooke’s recent performance and I hope it will serve as a motivator to other athletes ahead of the All-Africa Games,” said Muringani.
“Cooke is in the African Games teams and he is also training towards the Olympic Games from his base in the United States. He has proved to be a hard worker and that has put both him and our nation in a respectable international position.”
The multi-talented athlete showed that he was not finished yet, when he bettered his own record to 7,079 points at the end of 2013.
Recently, Cooke eclipsed his standing record, when he garnered 7,491 points to finish second at the Santa Barbra Track Club 7Ten Combined Events Championship at Westmont College in California, United States of America.
Decathlon is a multi-disciplined event in which the athletes compete in 10 different events to accumulate aggregate gross total points.
The Zimbabwean athlete settled for a silver medal after Dereck Masterson took gold with 7,554 points, while Thomas Hopkins was third 7,291 points.
Cooke finished the 100m sprint in 11.40s and then leaped 6.97m in long jump. He finished the 3,000m steeple chase race in 13 minutes 13 seconds while he cleared 1.93m during high jump.
In the 400m race, Cooke stopped the clock in 48.89s as Hopkins won the sprint in 47.22s.
Cooke ran the fastest time in the 110m hurdles when he won the event in 14.94s while he reached 4.20m in pole vault.
The Zimbabwean’s discuss throw was 27.65m while he speared 60.29 m in javelin and then ran 4 minutes 30.64s seconds in the 1 500m race.
Post published in: Athletics