The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled for 4th – 20th February 2022 in Beijing, China. Although this is an Olympic Games that doesn’t feature a huge Kenyan presence, the country has participated in four editions in the past, including the 2018 edition of the Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Kenya however has no athletes to represent the country in this year’s event.
There were two Olympics and one Paralympics hopefuls on the path to Beijing 2022, namely Sabrina Simader (Alpine skiing), Dennis Moronge (Cross-country skiing) and Daniel Katheku Safari (Para skiing).
Daniel Katheku, has been training through scholarships in South Korea and USA, but due to travel restriction he was unable to honour qualification events in the last two years.
Dennis Moronge, a resident in Czech Republic was in the path line to Olympics, but restrictions in Europe due to the coronavirus pandemic made him miss out on qualification events to gain enough points for Beijing.
Sabrina Simader was the only one who had met the qualification standard. NOC-K had seen great potential in her, disbursing Kshs. 8 million in the last 3 years towards her training and preparation. She however required more financial resources to sufficiently train for the specific event in which she qualifies in Beijing and therefore felt she wasn’t well prepared, opting instead to focus on World Championships and tours this year with a clear focus of preparing for the next Olympics.
NOC-K and the Ministry continue building pathways towards ensuring athletes who wish to qualify and participate in future winter Olympics receive utmost support and tap the talents of many young Kenyans in the diaspora, as well as in country for some of the sports that are fairly less complicated like curling which has already launched in the country. Ice hockey is also practiced in Kenya.
It also projects a great place not only for performance but promoting brand placement and tourism.
The journey begins towards Winter Olympics in 2026 in the Italian Cities of Milan and Cortina d’Amprezzo