Fifty-nine vulnerable athletes from the North Rift region today, May 9th 2020 benefited from food donated from the Ministry of Sports and Eliud Kipchoge Foundation.
Young and vulnerable athletes from Kapsabet in Nandi County, Eldoret in Uasin Gisgu, Iten in Elgeyo Marakwet and Kaptagat in Elgeyo Marakwet received foodstuffs by world marathon record holder Kipchoge who led the distribution team in the various stations.
In Kapsabet, 13 athletes athletes carried home their food, 13 in Iten, 9 in Eldoret and 24 in Kaptagat.
The athletes received the donations in their training bases to avoid movement as guided by the government.
The two time Berlin marathon winner said the initiative is by the government of Kenya through the ministry of Sports who identified about 70 vulnerable athletes.
“It is a good initiative that I started in Kericho yesterday (Friday 8th) and today we were in Kapsabet, Eldoret, Iten and Kaptagat,” said the London marathon winner.
However he said that the donation is not enough since 80% of athletes need a lot of support to put food on their tables since everything has stalled due to coronavirus urging cooperates to come in handy to support them.
“Majority of the events they were planning have been cancelled or postponed and we don’t know if they will happen or not. These athletes and the whole sporting fraternity earn their living through sports and they need more support. I urge corperates to join the government and donate foodstuffs to athletes. If we get more support, we can extend our hands to every part of this country to reach more sportsmen and women,” he said.
He insisted that there are only 70 athletes but about 3,000 need support during this trying time to continue training in isolation as guided by the government through the ministry of Health.
“I would like to urge athletes to keep on training and keep distance or train in isolations and make sure that they wake up in the morning, go for training and do the best you can but keep social distance, respect the government directives and all will be well. May in the next one month the government can actually give us a go ahead,” he added.
He edefnded his move and cretaria used in selecting beneficieries saying he selected the most vulnerable by identifying someone who cannot afford to buy food, but he or she is training the hard way.
“Just like any cooperate who wants to give scholarships to students, they cannot offer scholarships to someone who scored 90 marks. They look for the student who scored 350-400 marks to benefit. We are also looking for individuals who are training hard and lacks the money to buy food,” he said.