Over 100 athletes and coaches have been trained to treat Kenyan injured athletes as they prepare for international assignments across the world.
Jeremy Henrichs, the Managing Director of Running the Race, a non-profit Sports Ministry said they have trained over 100 athletes, coaches, clinicians and caregivers in the country to foster sports in Kenya.
Speaking in Eldoret during the football and basketball clinical physical exercise, their main purpose is to educate Kenyan coaches, athletes and clinicians like physicians to help them further their training so that they can also take care of Kenyan sporting population.
“Since we started the programme in Kenya back in 2018, we have been coming to Iten to do clinics and take care of injured athletes. We provide rehab programmes for them to follow and hope to get them back to the activities of training after many of them missing the training for months and we want them to perform at the highest level,” said Henrichs.
He added that for them to do that, they have to take care of their injuries to achieve their mandate is to put them through education for both athletes and coaches, clinicians and caregivers in Kenya.
“We want to be here frequently to provide clinics in three to four times a year and for long term goals is to train Kenyan physicians and sports medicine to take care of their own athletes to provide sustainable care the athletes rather than relying on people to come from the USA or UK to provide the services. We want Kenyans to gain the analogy in the training to take care of the athletes too. Part of our goal here is to do injury prevention and try to educate athletes and how to provide some strengthen programmes for the core, hips, legs and some strength flexibility on preventing injury,” he added.
He said that they want to ensure that they do the right thing to keep from getting injured. When injured it is good to get rest and work.
“Top athletes who compete in the Olympic Games, world championships have the risk such injuries, denying them an opportunity to win medals for their respective disciplines. We started with 30-40 athletes in January 2018, added 60 in the second trip and this time we expect a double-figure. So far we are not doing anything to market ourselves to make a profit but we are spreading the news by word of mouth because we are not a profit-making organization. We want to build relationships and trust, which is the most important thing to do. Without trust, then our work is useless,” concluded Henrichs.