Champion Cheruiyot hopes to maintain form through to 2021
Nairobi, Tuesday
World 1,500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot is ruing a missed opportunity to cement his name in the sport’s wall of fame by winning an Olympics medal in 2020.
Cheruiyot, 24, had high expectations this season, but all that has disappeared as he can’t train or compete in any event at the moment.
The Diamond League has been postponed with the first race likely in August and the Olympic Games pushed to 2021.
Now, he is left with doing his part-time job, farming. “Of course I had set my sights on winning my fourth Diamond League trophy and the Olympic Games,” said Cheruiyot on Monday from his home in Bomet.
Cheruiyot had hoped to use the top form he has enjoyed recently to challenge some of the times set in the distance, defend the Diamond Trophy and win the Tokyo Olympics.
Now he will have to wait, hoping he will find similar form in 2021, to hunt for medals and records.
“Hopefully, I will be in the same form as last season. But we have to accept to live with things we can’t change.
We have to accept the postponement of the Games because nothing much could have been done,” he said.
Cheruiyot belives the world will emerge stronger after the coronavirus and it is important that athletes continue training no matter how hard it is to do it alone.
“Of course, we are finding ourselves in a very difficult situation as athletes but we take heart because it is a global problem.
We will overcome it and sports will be back on the big stage,” Cheruiyot said.
Kenyan athletes will have a tough choice to make in 2021 when most sports events are expected to return.
There will be the Commonwealth Games, the Olympic Games, the Diamond League, Africa Championships and Continental Tour. -Xinhua
