Athletics Kenya pick dates for Olympic trials
Trials for the 36th edition of Tokyo Olympics will be held on July 2 and 3 in Nairobi.
Athletics Kenya (AK) competitions director Paul Mutwii said the federation will hold the men’s and women’s 10,000 metres trials for the Tokyo Olympic Games separately from the other events, according to a tentative 2020/21 calendar of events.
“We want to see if we can get it right this time around in 10,000m. We hope to reclaim glory over the distance,” Mutwii told People Sport.
Mutwii said the venues for the events will be communicated later.
The Tokyo Olympic Games that scheduled for July 24 to August 9 this year, were deferred by a year to July 23- August 8 due to Covid-19 pandemic.
Team Kenya registered a historic performance at Rio 2016 where they bagged six gold, six silver and one bronze for a 15th place ranking, their third best showing ever in the history of the Olympics.
However, their stellar performance was overshadowed by a kit fiasco as well as misappropriation of funds that finally landed former National Olympic Committee of Kenya (Nock) officials.
Kenya’s Chef de Mission to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Waithaka Kioni insists next year’s Summer Games will present a perfect opportunity to erase the bad memories of the 2016 Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Kenya Volleyball Federation (KVF) president is optimistic that athletes from other disciplines will qualify for the Games and ease the burden on athletics who delivered all the 13 medals Kenya won in Rio.
“Kenya has been doing well in athletics but the truth is that we have a lot of potential in other sports.
We need to invest in team sports seriously. Our men’s basketball team and women’s volleyball team are doing very well so we need to support them,” said Kioni.
Noc-K has already settled for Japan’s Kurume City to host Kenya’s pre-Olympic Games camp.
“It’s a very generous gesture and we remain grateful to the government and embassy of Japan.
I am hoping we can have very many athletes qualifying so that we can take full advantage of the facility offered,” said Kioni, who is also the Confederation of African Volleyball (CAVB) deputy president.
In the tentative 2020/2021 calendar of events the preliminary trials for Team Kenya for World Under-20 Championships will start the season on November 20 and 21 at the Nyayo National Stadium.
The annual Athletics Kenya Athletes’ Conference is set for December 2 to 5 in Nairobi. Kenya will send teams to the World Indoor Championships due March 19 to 21 in Nanjing, China and the World Relay Championships on May 1 to 2 in Silesia, Poland.
