By ELLY IMANYARA
For the first time in three decades, the Kenyan national anthem was not played at an international athletics meet as the country’s team for the second IAAF World Relays in Bahamas returned home with two silver medals, a seventh overall finish and 15 points.
Team sponsors, local integrated communication service giants Safaricom and Athletics Kenya (AK) managed to throw the squad of 27 a warm reception where the readily available excuse the squad failed to hit the heights due to the inexperience coursing through its ranks proved handy.
Only a year before at the same T. Robinson Stadium in Nassau, Kenya finished third overall behind sprint running titans USA who retained the Golden Baton and Jamaica after winning three gold medals and setting two world records in both the men and women 4x1500m races.
To compound Kenya’s woeful performance, the men 4x200m quartet were disqualified despite winning their heat for presenting an amended running order and similar fate befell their men 4x800m teammates who had finished their final in silver position behind USA over the technical rule of lane violations while exchanging batons.
Perhaps in an effort to share the honours all-round and prevent the latest brainchild international meeting from being another East African affair in the distance races, world governing body IAAF discontinued the 4x1500m event and instead introduced the Distance Medley race to lump together athletes in 400m, 800m, 1200m and 1600m.
However, that was not a suitable excuse for Kenya to return home without a top medal to show since the country had enough ammunition to excel in the 4x800m as well as the medley events.
So, what went wrong for the proud athletics nation in Nassau?
“We were there, (Sammy Rono) Romeo kick us out coz (because) we didn’t run the series which we got the rule the last week. We (were) told direct face to face. What happened in 200m men the same thing for last year,” former women 800m world champion, Janeth ‘Eldoret Express’ Jepkosgei, replied on Facebook in a post she was tagged in asking why Kenya sent a team of largely greenhorns to Bahamas.
– New rules-
For anyone not conversant with what she was on about, athletics was the sole beneficiary of Safaricom’s sponsorship kitty for sports in early April when the firm announced a bumper Sh120m package for 2015 to cover the Relay Series, Relay Trials, National Track Championships, Trials for IAAF Beijing World Championships and a variety of domestic road races spread across 10K, half marathon and marathon held under the company’s title banner.
The circuit was divided into three arms namely: Safaricom Relay Edition, Safaricom Track and Field Edition and Safaricom Long Distance Edition.
“We hope to give our athletes a chance to explore their talents by providing more platforms for them to take advantage of. We will not relent on our commitment to support athletics. Our overall objective is to have a positive impact in sports as we continue with our agenda of transforming lives of communities,” Safaricom chief, Bob Collymore said during the unveiling of the deal at their Nairobi head office.
The announcement came as relief at AK Riadha House headquarters after Collymore, mentioned the federation in February alongside rugby and football as the sports they were dissociating from due to lack of transparency and embezzlement in managing finances.
A month later, Safaricom made good their threat and pulled out of rugby, affecting the annual popular international sevens tournament, Safari 7s and the rugby sevens series.
What was not brought out during the official proclamation of the largest local sponsorship package in athletics history were terms and conditions attached therein where Safaricom pushed for top athletes to compete in their domestic meetings to add value to their brand visibility and event promotion.
It prompted AK president, Isaiah Kiplagat, who is on a three month sabbatical leave to vie for the vice-presidency of IAAF, to roll out new rules that made it mandatory for all athletes, regardless of stature or standing, to take part in domestic meetings to be considered for invitation at national trials and subsequent selection in the country’s team.
The Bahamas World Relays were the first under this directive and having made such declarations in the past, most elite runners gave the three Safaricom Relay Series meetings the wide berth waiting for the call to run at the Trials.
But they had not reckoned with the invisible powerful hand of the giant firm pulling strings behind the scenes as AK stuck to their guns and failed to invite star athletes to their April 3 Trials suitably held at Nairobi’s Safaricom Stadium in Kasarani.
“All athletes and coaches should take note that all athletes who will not participate on 21st will not be invited on March or be considered for National trials because it will be by invitation only,” the federation said in a statement ahead of the third relay series meeting of March 21.
And after the Trials and naming of the Bahamas squad, Kiplagat reiterated, “You may have noticed we don’t have many big athletes in this team. We have been seeing top athletes refuse to run in our local events. Kenya is a country with many runners so we can send teams without them.”
Two-time world men 1500m champion, Asbel Kiprop, world junior record holder at the same distance, Ronald Kwemoi who won silver at the African Championships last year, Olympics men 800m bronze medallist and the returning Timothy Kitum ran at the domestic circuit.
Fully recovered Olympic champion and men 800m record holder, David Rudisha, arguably Kenya’s biggest runner at the moment, world women champion, Eunice Sum, Jepkosgei, Commonwealth champion, Mercy Cherono and former World Indoor titleholder, Hellen Obiri were some of the eligible star athletes who were sidelined by the new rule.
Sum, Jepkosgei, Cherono and Obiri were part of the women 4x800m and 4x1500m squads that won gold in Bahamas last year where the latter ran a world record to boot.
In noticeable solidarity with their colleagues, Kiprop and Kwemoi withdrew from the squad days before departure although the official line was they were injured.
It was at this backdrop that Kenya returned her worst performance in three decades and after the team’s return, the post-mortem was underway as top runners expressed their displeasure on social and mainstream media.
-Love Kenya-
“I love running for my country and I regret not going to Bahamas but we must be heard. We usually enter into contracts to run at international events well in advance, sometimes even six months to a race and to tell us in March we must run in Kenya to be in the team, it becomes hard.
“We plan our programmes to include the championship time but not to run here at home where sometimes, the high altitude takes away so much of what you have trained for, especially in the early season like March and that is why I did not want to risk when I heard a hamstring strain like the one that made me finish last at the London Olympics,” Kiprop who was the designated poster boy for team Kenya explained.
“Talk of coaching, does anyone one knows how this athletes train for build up, before coming to any specific training towards an international race or its just to run to press,” Jepkosgei added in support.
Upon touchdown, AK chief executive officer, Isaac Mwangi who accompanied the Bahamas squad acknowledged sending out such an inexperienced team cost them dear but in towing the official line, declared they would sit down and ‘review the selection criteria’.
“We have a very open selection process. We cannot force someone to run when they are not willing to run for the country. We have learnt lessons and we will see how to improve on the format, we need to sit down and rethink and see how well we can do on that,” Mwangi told the media at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport upon arrival in a statement that also took a dig at the established names who declined to abide by the new selection requirements and compete at home.
“Elite athletes were not there so we took a new team, the team was young. The technical bench had set rules, if you do not appear in one of the three relay series you are not considered for selection and we based our selection on that.
“Elite athletes start somewhere and that is what we did,” head coach Rono who led the team for a second successive year to Bahamas and a former Kenya Army serviceman said in defending the selection of the team.
However, his tactics and the fact that two teams in prime positions were disqualified from the competition were admonished by elite athletes who questioned his credentials.
In the men’s Medley Relay for instance, Ferguson Rotich who competed for the country at the last World Championships in Moscow in 2013 without progressing to the finals went out in the 800m leg at a faster pace than Rudisha ran when he set the staggering world record of 1:40.91 at the 2012 London Olympics final in the first 400m.
This suicidal running display and the baton exchange errors and the fact that talented distance runners were taken to school by USA, who are more famed for sprints exposed the ill-preparedness of the squad.
“Kenya was failed by the coaches who have no technical glue of relays rules. I can’t believe that they changed the order of athlete at world stage after final submission coaches not having one of them at 200m mark to fix self pacing of athletes is unexpectedly,” international runner, Haron Lagat pointed out.
“When I retire from competitive running, I would say Kenya coaches need a seminar or take track and field coaching technical session classes mainly to field events where technically is most important, we have the students but no good teachers.
“You cannot defy the laws of physiology 51.96 (Rotich’s split at 400m) is trying to do something that has never been done before unless you are a legend in the making. Hats off to the athletes, and they should not be ashamed or intimidated by anyone because they are in good shape but coaches failed them,” he explained.
“I was called to explain how I changed the running order (4x800m women), my answer was simple, I am an athlete not the coach my job was to try our best,” Jepkosgei, the Beijing Olympics 800m silver medallist inputted in support in recalling her experience last year when Rono questioned her on re-arranging the squad that went on to win gold as women’s team captain.
“The 4x200m was the same mistake. Was it not the same coaches in 2015? They forgot to tell even a simple rule to athletes that once you present the final four, don’t change the order! I believe in those guys, they wanted to run, to do their best,” ‘Eldoret Express’ who has won 13 medals for her nation underscored.
Having been taught a bitter lesson of stirring the nest of the geese that lays their golden eggs, it is all in AK’s hands in seeing whether sponsor pressure and dodgy selection of coaches will come to haunt the country again when the world’s best track and field athletes gather in Beijing in August for the IAAF World Championships.
