The double Olympic swimming champion, who is chair of the International Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission, said the country currently had "no long-term vision" when it came to sport.

Meetings have been held between the Sports Ministry, the Zimbabwe Olympic Committee (ZOC), the Zimbabwe Paralympic Committee and the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) to plan the way forward.

"I think for the first time ever, ZOC, the SRC and the Ministry and the Zimbabwe Paralympic Committee have all sat down together around a table and discussed issues around the structure of our sports and what we need," Coventry said to The Standard.

"We have come up with an agreement that we need a national sports strategy that will lead the way.

"We will be asking all of our stakeholders, meaning national sports associations, corporates, venue holders, to give their input.

"We need to work on being very purposeful, right now the way that we've been funding sport is a little bit all over the place.

"There's no formal structure, if a national association needs funding they apply to SRC, and SRC then apply to Government and what I've found out in the last year is that some of the requests are once-off and don't really lead on to anything, there's no long-term vision."

Coventry is Africa's most decorated Olympian and won gold in the 200 metres backstroke at both Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008.

She also won four Olympic silver medals and one bronze in her career, and is responsible for all but one of the eight medals Zimbabwe has claimed at the Games.

Their only other medal was won by the women's hockey team which claimed gold at the boycotted 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

Thirty-six-year-old Coventry called on her country to conduct more research and target specific sports in a bid for more success.

"We need some scientific research about, physiologically, which are the sports we should be focusing on," she said.

"We need research on the data to find out from these sports, which specific event should be supported.

"In athletics we've sent a marathon runner to the Olympic Games for as long as I can remember and they've placed within the top 15 numerous times. 

"So, that should be a sport that we focus on, not necessarily athletics as a whole.

"A country like Jamaica, we know that they are known for athletics, but not just that, but specifically in the 100, 200 and 400 metres sprints.

"South Africa have since 2008 been focusing on growing high jump, swimming and a few other sports.

"So, we really want to start to be a lot more proactive with the sports that we are funding, but in order to do that we need to work very closely with all national sports associations, the ZOC and the SRC to come up with a national sports strategy."