Gadzirayi officially took up her role on September 1 as the permanent replacement for Stephen Mudawarima, who had resigned in March.

Gadzirayi, who has a background in business and sports administration, including working for the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe, has spent the first month getting to know the role and believes that it is important to help people in her country understand what the Olympics mean.

"So basically, we know what the Olympics are, they come once every four years," she told Zimbabwe newspaper The Herald.

"But I think one of my mandates is to actually make everybody understand what Olympics mean.

"Do we just wait four years to then start talking about the Olympics?

"So, I think some of my immediate tasks about the visibility of the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee and what does that mean, it’s also understanding the journey to the Olympics.

"So, part of it, is to actually just showcase what athletes are doing, how we are preparing for the Olympics, what actually happens before the Olympics and getting to understand what it means for an athlete to actually qualify for the Olympics.

"I think the Olympics are basically a destination."

Zimbabwe competed at the Olympics for the first time under its current name at Moscow 1980 when, against all the odds, its women’s hockey team won the gold medal.

It had to wait until Athens 2004 for another medal of any colour when swimmer Kirsty Coventry won the 200 metres backstroke.

She retained the title at Beijing 2008 as part of a total of seven medals she won at the two Games.

Coventry was recently re-appointed for a second term as Zimbabwe’s Sports Minister.

Zimbabwe has not won a medal since she won four, including three silver, in the Chinese capital.

The team it sent to Tokyo for the re-arranged 2020 Olympic Games was the smallest since Amsterdam 1928, when the country was called Southern Rhodesia.

Zimbabwe sent a team of five athletes to the Japanese capital, one each in athletics, golf and rowing and two in swimming.

They failed to win a medal for the third consecutive Olympics with the best performance coming from Scott Vincent, who finished equal 16th in the men’s golf.