Eldoret, for the first time will be hosting national Cross country champions cum national trials ahead of world cross country championships in Aarhus, Denmark.
The designed course at Eldoret Sports club on 23rd February is a flat course compared to the Aarhus course where athletes will be competing on come 30th March 2019.
But the flat course according local Organising Committee chairman Abraham Mutai cannot stop Kenyan runners from claiming the world cross country title the same way they have been doing.
With new blood of athletes from the regions and all forces across the country, Mutai said the course in Aarhus, Denmark was received long time ago and athletes are aware of the course.
“What we will be doing here is just selecting the team. The course was received long time ago and athletes are training according to the course and weather conditions and in Denmark. What will happen on 23rd is just to select the team after that, the coaches will deliberate and get to know how trainings will be done to make sure that Kenya wins at the world cross country title,” said Mutai also the Central Rift Athletics Kenya chairman.
While on tour of the course on Thursday morning, Mutai said the the current crop of athletes are educated and can understand different weather conditions hence training according to the changing weather patterns across the world.
“Looking at the quality of athletes lately, they are great, educated and can deliver at any given time. We have great and elite athletes from Kenya Police Service, The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and Prison Kenya who have competed well across the world and flat course in Eldoret cant deny them a world title,” added Mutai.
He said that the competition in Eldoret will be intense, remarkable and nobody will want to miss the championships.
“The mixture of young and elite athletes will offer good competition as a build up to the world championships in Qatar. Young athletes like Rhonex Kipruto (the world under 20 10,000m champion, Edward Zakayo (Commonwealth Games 5,000m bronze medalist) will give good competition to the established athletes like Geoffrey Kamworor, not forgetting the regions which have been producing good athletes every year,” explained Mutai.
He added that they are waiting on 9th February when regions will be through with their championships before launching the championships on 14th February and start list to be out the following so that everybody will know who will be competing come 23rd February.