Over 50 young athletes will benefit from the newly launched athletes training camp based at Kitany Boys high school in Elgeyo Marakwet County.
Former Olympic Games marathon bronze medalist Wilson Kipsang launched the new camp to guide young athletes who wants to be future world champions.
The camp will host athletes after they went through a selection period through coaches and top five finishers in each category got a chance to train.
With lack of training camps for the young people in the country, the former world marathon champion Kipsang under Wilson Kipsang Foundation said the camp will be great talent nurturing centre for athletes from the entire country as a way of supporting young talents.
“We have to create hope for young people in this country. We are looking at the future of this country and think of who will take up our places after we have retired,” said two time London marathon champion.
He said that such programmes should be run by the government but since they are not concerned about the welfare of athletes, they have to take up the initiative to ensure continuity of the talents in the country.
“We have taken this initiative to secure future for our athletes. We have the obligation to bring on board as many athletes as possible,” added the former New York marathon champion.
The former Tokyo marathon champion added that he will be training with the athletes every morning to monitor their progress.
“This is s high altitude region that is good for training and this camp will be great. I started my career here in 2003, training along this road and ten years later, I broke the marathon world record. That means this area is potential for great athletes only that nobody had discovered,” added Kipsang.
On Wednesday, Kipsang doniated food items worthy kshs 150,000.
School principal Godfrey Majani said the school has been neglected for long in terms of a training camp.
“I have been discussing these issues with teachers and locals on how to set up a training camp and before we came up with the solution, we got one already. This is an amazing duty,” said Majani who was the deputy principal at St. Patrick’s Iten that has produced world beating athletes across the world.