Over 3,000 expected at rich Eldoret City Marathon race

More than 3,000 athletes are expected to grace the third edition of the Eldoret City Marathon on April 19.

The theme of this year’s race is “Mitigating Climate Change Through Sports”.

The race, one of the best paying in Kenya, will see winners in both categories go home with Sh3.5 million each.

The top 20 finishers will receive prize money.

According to the race director Moses Tanui, who is also the two-time Boston Marathon champion, they were working to elevate the race to big city world event.

“We are improving the race each year and we are now working on some paper work to fulfil conditions that are set by the World Athletics as one way of elevating the race to a Majors Marathon,” said Tanui.

Tanui also used the event to warn athletes who are using performance enhancing drugs to get quick money which instead is tarnishing the name of hard working athletes in the country.

“We shall work with athletes who practice clean sport because already we are in category A in the World Athletics radar. Those athletes doing that are also tarnishing the names of athletes who trained and ran clean in the yester years,” said the retired athlete.

Tanui also said that they will be introducing sports tourism where athletes from Ethiopia and Uganda will be invited to compete in the race to make it better.

“We are going to invite a few athletes from Ethiopia and Uganda as a start and we are going to take them around to tour this region before they compete on that day. This will also be done when there is a race in the neighbouring counties as one way of improving our ties in terms of sports,” said Tanui.

The County government of Uasin Gishu, which is the main sponsor, called out for more sponsors to support the Eldoret City Marathon.

Speaking during the launch, Deputy Governor Daniel Chemno called for more sponsors to the race.