A team of Athletics Kenya officials today assessed Kipchoge Keino stadium in Eldoret ahead of naming the venue to host the Olympic Games national trials.
With less than a month to the trials set for June 17th to 19th, the federation had to assess the facility initially on the caladar of events in 2020.
Led by President Jack Tuwei alongside technical advisor Ibrahim Hussein, Olympics General team manager Barnabas Korir and vice president Paul Mutwii among others.
“Our main objective of in our calendar of events, we discussed on events of this year and Olympics was the agenda and you cannot take athletes to Olympics without trials to select the best team Kenya. And we considered this suitable place like we did in 2016 for Rio Olympics. During 2016 trials, people were happy so we wanted to give another chance for locals to enjoy both locally and internationally. And this is the reason we are here to see the suitability of the facility on the ground,” said Tuwei.
He said “The track is not bad and it can be used for the championships but of course we don’t look at the track alone. There are a few other issues that we look at. We want athletes to be as comfortable as possible, like going to the warm up areas, changing rooms among others,” said Tuwei.
We will not announce directly and we will discuss and make a decision. We want to promise that on Tuesday, we will give our verdict.
We only have one month before we host the trials and it will also be for athletes to know the venue for trials to help them prepare well, which is very important for them and even for the coaches, planners, administrators, and logistics. We want to give everybody a chance to start preparing.
We already have about 90 athletes who have already qualified and for trials, we will only go for through invitation.