Eldoret City marathon is back.
Today, the organziers of the race led by race director Moses Tanui announced that the 2024 event will be staged on April 21st in Eldoret.
After the 2023 cancellation of the race due to lack of funds, race director Moses Tanui said that they have put necessary measures to ensure that the race is held, urging leaders and well wishers to support the young and unprivileged athletes to register for them to get a chance to compete.
Speaking during the launch on Monday afternoon, the double Boston marathon champion said that there is a need to stand and support each other for prosperity.
“I want to request all the athletes to register in big numbers ahead of the event. We know we have had financial challenges but that is part of life and each one of us should adopt an athlete, especially those who cannot manage to pay Kshs 1,500. Let us help them register,” he said.
Concerning the registration, he said that they will be updating all the events so that they meet the World Athletics requirements on when to end the registration and collection of running numbers.
“What is needed in Kenya is to complete the registration, the list will go through Athletics Kenya then to the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK) for verification to ensure that every athlete who runs this race is clean,” he explained.
Speaking on behalf of retired athletes, Tanui said that the retired athletes have shown solidarity and been a motivation to the next generation.
“With the doping cases, we need to provide guidance to the young people. We shall give them the way and discipline.
Race patron Gladys Boss said that she will be fighting for the athletes’ rights all the way to have as many local races as possible.
“I want to fight for the athletes’ rights because we have so many athletes running in major races across the world yet we don’t have our own. We need to support the ones and have credible time. Majority of our athletes’ are killed morally because they lack races, no food among others in terms of training, running kits like shoes,” said Boss, who also serves as the Uasin Gishu County Woman Representative and deputy speaker of the National Assembly.
She said that the country needs to have more races to cater for the growing number of young athletes.
“We shall have as many races as possible so that those without managers and training camps will have opportunities to run. We need to support them when they are young, not to wait until it is late. Recently I visited Kenya lionesses (The Kenya 7s women team) who said that their big problem is food. Majority of them come from poor backgrounds,” she added.