Kenyan athletes hit US ground running

Kenya’s squad of a dozen athletes and a handful of officials have arrived in Portland, Oregon and launched their preparations for the Olympic trials.

The 10, 000m trials will run on the fringes of Saturday’s Diamond League’s Prefontaine Classic.

Athletics Kenya’s public relations officer, Peter Angwenyi, said the team was in high spirits after their trip.

“We arrived in Portland on Monday at 11.00am, local time and the 10,000m men’s team went for a light training at 4.45pm on the Nike Campus,” Angwenyi said on Monday.

“Most of the world’s top cream athletes have also arrived for the Prefontaine Classic. Some of these runners include Great Britain’s Mo Farah, Abubaker kaki of Sudan, Isaiah Kiplangat Koech of Kenya and Kenya-born Bernard Lagat of the USA.”

Olympic tickets

He added: “Kenya’s top women runners include Linet Masai (former world 10,000m champion).”

Kenya’s men’s 10,000m Olympic trial race will be part of the Prefontaine Classic programme with the first three athletes across the line earning tickets to represent Kenya at the London Olympics.

Ethiopia also held their Olympic 10,000m men’s trials away from home at last weekend’s FBK Games in Hengelo, the Netherlands.

Elsewhere, Usain Bolt is hoping the track in Rome will help propel him to a fast time and banish memories of his poor showing in Ostrava four days ago.

Running into a slight headwind, the Jamaican superstar recorded his worst time for three years in the Czech Republic. His time of 10.04 seconds over 100m was still good enough to win but the Olympic champion is hoping it was just a one-off.

“I definitely think Rome is a fast track, Asafa (Powell) proved that when I think he ran 9.7sec twice on this track,” said Bolt.
“That’s good, I’m looking forward to competing in the lead up to the trials in Jamaica, it’s good to run and compete before the trials.

“A lot of people predicted I would run 9.7sec in Ostrava, I said I wanted to run 9.7sec because I ran 9.8sec in Kingston (in his previous race).

“For me 9.7sec is always a good time to run but I never predict because you never know what will happen on the day, as happened in Ostrava.”

On course to defend titles

Although it was almost half a second off his world record of 9.58sec, Bolt insisted it was nothing more than a blip and that he is still on course to defend his Olympic crowns in both the 100m and 200m in London.

“I said every day that you can never have a good race every time you run, for me it was just one of my bad races,” he added.

“I have to put it behind and move on, I’m not worried, there are a lot more races to run and the main races are at the Olympics.”

Despite discussing it with his coach Glen Mills, Bolt could not pinpoint just why he had run so badly, although he still pipped St Kitts and St Nevis veteran Kim Collins and American Darivs Patton into second and third.

“We have talked but for me on that day I explained that my legs were just not feeling that energetic,” said Bolt.

“It was probably a lack of sleep or food, I don’t know, I didn’t feel the energy I normally feel.

“Since then I’ve been trying to get better sleep and eat better. I wasn’t feeling that bad technically over the first 45-50m but then we talked about my shoulders coming up a bit but not much.”

While it is still only the very elite speedsters who can dip under 10-seconds for 100m, Bolt referred to it as a “slow” time but added that there was no need to worry that such a snail’s pace will be repeated any time soon.