The National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) is keen to spearhead quality performance of Team Kenya at future global events with the noble objective to bolster professionalism in sport.
One of the key facets being targeted in this ambitious plan is Sports Science and monitoring of structures and selection mechanisms at federation level.
NOC-K Secretary Francis Mutuku said the Committee is moving away from an event- based perspective to an innovative performance-based approach.
Speaking in Naivasha during the Sports Journalists Association of Kenya (SJAK) Annual General meeting, Mutuku remarked: “Whatever they do, and wherever they are working from what should come out clearly is that our sportsmen and women must have the best chance or equal chance like any other persons to represent the country. “
“In view of the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, we are saying that each and every event, each and every program we are going to be involved in, be it an international assignment, we will now tie it towards what we want to achieve.”
“Even the team that is going to Commonwealth Games, the target is much more than just going there. Our focus is future competitions.”
Mutuku added that they expect good results as a country going forward, but then again appealed for patience.
“We have to give them time to build up especially if it’s a young upcoming team.
The others we need to have good performance in Commonwealth Games; but the bottom line here is we want to strat preparing for Olympic Games now,” explained Mutuku.
Mutuku added that NOC-K wants to share the message that ‘it’s a change of focus and a change of strategy that’s performance based.
“The second thing that we have shared is that for Commonwealth and every other international events where NOCK is involved, we want to ensure that it’s the best Kenyans who represent us,” he noted.
Mutuku remarked that they have engaged their affiliate Federations and had meetings with them to agreed that there are two things that they’ll be looking out for in the criteria of selection.
“The criteria should bring out the best Kenyan and should be made public for everyone to know what was being used and most importantly it should be understandable by the player.”
–Sports Science –
NOC-K is working to introduce technology to deliver results and indeed help coaches nurture young budding talent.
“Sports science is something that we are saying as NOC-K, we must embrace because it entails several aspects of sport. First in terms of data, we need to know what we have. Some of the people have shared, and yes, there is data which is resident in different places but now we want to be able to have a national data base for our top athletes, ” added Mutuku.
Mutuku explained that there is need to ascertain the status of our national teams before major competitions so that they can be able to compare with the coming events.
“What are some of this technologies we can be able to deliver to make assessment of all Kenya athletes traveling, so that when a coach makes a decision who to drop and who to pick is not purely based on subjective feelings,” he noted.
-Qualifications for hokey –
Meanwhile, NOC-K has congratulated the hockey team for qualifying for the Commonwealth Games.
Mutuku noted that the team deserves accolades given the kind of hiccups they had to contend with at the eleventh hour.
“All of us know under what circumstances the team travelled to and that goes to show how much talent we have and for us as the Olympic Committee, we are very proud to be represented in a team sport. It means that our systems and structures are improving even as we still have a long way but we are on the right track,” Mutuku said.
“We want to congratulate them as we immediately engaging them from Monday so that they can catch up with the other affiliates. Talent is immense, so we just need to look for resources to be able to nurture it.”