Kenyan athletes deserve better than the deadwood in our Olympics committee
The strains of our national anthem will echo dozens of times around London this month as our athletes claim another large haul of gold from the Olympics.
Those will be the moments when we forget our differences and become, for a season, Kenyans all over again.
But the pride in the exploits of Team Kenya should not obscure the absolute scandal that has been the preparations for these games.
The athletes will triumph in spite of, not because of, the officials in charge of the National Olympic Committee.
If you don’t read the sports pages here’s a quick recap: The sports officials went off to the UK some time back and struck a deal with the Bristol training camp that bound the Olympics team to train there for at least a fortnight before the games.
The arrangement would have worked out fine if Kenya depended on events like wrestling, shooting, judo or chasing horses about for its medals.
It doesn’t. The bread and butter of the team is, of course, athletics. And the middle-and long-distance runners prefer to train in Kenya for as long as possible because of the advantage conferred by high- altitude work-outs in places like as Iten and Ngong, which build endurance.
When the star athletes insisted they would not travel to cold, rainy Bristol and abandon their optimal training conditions in Kenya, the Olympics committee threw tantrums.
They ranted and raved and warned of unspecified consequences, with the backing of the Sports ministry.
The athletes – with the aid of some good reporting by sports journalists and the support of Athletics Kenya – stood their ground.
The Olympics committee officials gave up and abandoned the athletes in Kenya. By July 15, there were 16 officials supervising 13 athletes who had opted to travel to Bristol, while 35 athletes were left in the hands of one official in Kenya.
This is atrocious; but it is the way things work in sports federations in this country. There have been many changes in the wider Kenyan society over the last few decades.
Sports federations have proved immune to the stiff winds of change that have brought greater transparency and openness elsewhere.
Officials generally serve for decades in the same office.
It’s time for a change. The Olympic committee, for example, is composed of officials from sports such as judo, “softball”, handball, who have been there forever.
Other federations such as cycling, swimming and weight-lifting have had the same officials for as long as anyone can remember.
Athletics Kenya deserves credit for backing the runners on the Bristol issue. But surely Isaiah Kiplagat, who became an official of its forerunner KAAA when Kenyatta was still president, should pave the way for younger blood? When will David Okeyo and Joseph Kinyua call it quits?
Fresh blood from younger athletes like Paul Tergat et al would not be a bad thing in these institutions.
Our world-beating heroes deserve better than the shambles that was the run-up to London.
Nigeria, of all countries, is offering an example to Kenya on how to save taxpayers money by limiting expenditure on foreign trips.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s government declared that any state official planning to go to London would have to pay their own way and that only athletes and a few sports officials would travel.
An editorial in the Punch newspaper lauded the move although it lamented that the team would still be overshadowed by Kenya and Ethiopia. “Nigeria’s performance is not good enough. Kenya’s haul of six gold, four silver and four bronze medals at just one Olympics in 2008 in Beijing is better than Nigeria’s all-time total …”
