Sunday, March 21, 2010
NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- The African Senior Championships might be four months away, but a small group of Somali athletes are in Nairobi to tune up their preparations as they look forward to making a comeback to a competition they have skipped for over a decade.
Somalia is one of the countries that have already handed in their reserved list of athletes for the championship which will be staged in Nairobi from July 28 to August 1.
David Okeyo, the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) chief executive officer, confirmed that Somalia will bring in 12 athletes out of the total 2,300 expected to converge in Nairobi for the championship, which will be used to select Africa team for the Athletics World Cup in Split City in Croatia in September.
Based in Eastleigh, the athletes join hundreds of their Kenyan colleagues in morning run and remain optimistic they might get a medal in the competition.
Mohammed Tareq, a 5,000m athlete had to literally run away from Mogadishu to Nairobi and like his colleagues, eyes to make the Somalia team, done its national jersey and hope he will be able to break the Kenya/Ethiopia monopoly.
"Here it is possible to train.
In Mogadishu, it is dangerous and hot making it hard for anyone to focus on his training.
There is also very little technical support," said Tareq.
Already Kenya has surpassed Nigeria, traditionally known to enter the biggest number of athletes in the competition, with the number of preliminary entries at 164.
Nigeria has reserved slots to enter 154, Somalia has 12 athletes, Uganda 30, Congo 32 while Swaziland, a tiny country landlocked within South Africa will have three athletes.
Okeyo said he is expecting the national carrier Kenya Airways to offer reduced fares, which is expected to motivate many countries to attend.
Kenya is thus expected to attract the highest number of entries.
Meanwhile, over 1,000 athletes are expected to gather in Nyeri, about 250 kilometres east of Nairobi for a two-day second Athletics Kenya/New KCC Weekend Meeting from on Friday.
This is the second series of events Kenya has planned in its preparations for the continental championship.
Also during the two-day weekend meeting, Local Organising Committee of the African Championships will run a two-day seminar for journalists from Mount Kenya Region.
Five-time world cross country champion and twice Olympics 10,000m silver medallist, Paul Tergat, is expected to attend the seminar.
Source: Xinhua