Kenya’s performance in Denmark should be a wake-up call

What you need to know:

  • But all said and done, I must say it was all not lost in Denmark as our golden girls Hellen Obiri and Beatrice Chebet saved the country the blushes when our boy child was really suffering.
  • Obiri won the senior women’s cross country race to become the first woman ever to win senior world titles indoors, outdoors, and at cross.
  • Chebet on her part ensured the junior women’s title returned to Kenya after a poor outing in 2017 in Kampala. All the same, it’s time we got back to business lest we forget

I have always said that our biggest threats in athletics are not Ethiopians as it has long been perceived but our neighbours Uganda who have been growing in confidence with every passing day.

That is why I was not surprised with our performance last week at the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

Of course like anybody else, we prepared well and had this conviction that we are still the best after ruling the last event in 2017 in Kampala, Uganda.

The fact that we had our top man and defending champion Geoffrey Kamworor in the line up added to our confidence.

But alas! Little did we know that the Ugandans had picked important lessons as the hosts of the 2017 world event and would eventually destroy us.

This time Joshua Cheptegei and his counterpart Jacob Kiplimo got us flat-footed and deservedly won gold and silver medals in senior men’s 10km race.

For Kenyan athletics followers, the senior men’s race has always acted as the SI Unit for gauging our success and it does not matter what else we win. We have sort of criminalised losing that particular title since time immemorial because we see it as Kenyan.

Perhaps this is partly because we dominated it for a long time, with William ‘The Horse’ Sigei, John Ngugi and Paul Tergat winning it five times a piece hence it became ‘ours’.

But times have changed and we really need to go back to the drawing board and re-strategise because I also think Ugandans are not done with us. We have kind of become complacent and stuck in our comfort zone as other countries continue to seek answers on how to progress.

Our performance in Denmark must serve as a wake-up call as it seems it won’t be business as usual at the World athletics Championships in Doha. We can not therefore, afford to sit on the laurels and assume-that things are normal.

Considering the current debate of dropping the 5000m from the Diamond League, it will be vital for us to organize our own build up camps early enough to enable us cope with the rising competition especially in the region.

Less 5000 and 10000m races at the Diamond League circuit means less build ups for our athletes and this demands that we take a different angle all together.

We have to identify our probables in especially the two events, put them in a camp and seriously work towards Doha. Failure to do this, we will still be talking the same language in September.

But all said and done, I must say it was all not lost in Denmark as our golden girls Hellen Obiri and Beatrice Chebet saved the country the blushes when our boy child was really suffering.

Obiri won the senior women’s cross country race to become the first woman ever to win senior world titles indoors, outdoors, and at cross.

Chebet on her part ensured the junior women’s title returned to Kenya after a poor outing in 2017 in Kampala. All the same, it’s time we got back to business lest we forget.