Kenya to send 123 athletes to Commonwealth Games

Kenya will be represented by 132 athletes and 57 officials at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games planned for April 4-15 in Australia, chef de mission Barnaba Korir disclosed Friday.

Korir, who recently toured Gold Coast for a series of meetings with the Club Games organisers, said that Kenya only benefited with four additional slots that will now be shared by boxing, swimming, shooting and Paralympics equally.

Boxing will now take a squad off 11 boxers; seven men and four women while swimming and shooting that had four slots will now take five athletes each for the quadrennial games that involve Britain and her former colonies.

Paralympics that had been allocated one slot will now have two, the additional one in T45 category.

“It’s good to note that it’s not the National Olympic Committee of Kenya that is dishing out the slots but the Commonwealth Games organisers,” Korir said. “They were strict on boxing that they can only add one more slot as long as it goes to the women.”

Kenya will be taking a reduced team to the Gold Coast Games as compared to the 2014 Glasgow where the country was represented by 195 sportsmen and women.

Kenya will once again be represented in 15 disciplines in Gold Coast.

Athletics will have the highest representation with 65 athletes.

“There are events where the organisers have even indicated on the number of technical officials that accompany the team owing to accommodation facilities in Gold Coast,” said Korir. “We shall be forced to have technical officials double up in some roles in teams that have few athletes.”

The National Olympic Committee of Kenya (Nock) has already presented a provisional budget of Sh450 million to the government for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

Some Sh380 million was spent by Team Kenya at the 2014 Games.