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Kenya: Team Need to Prepare Well for International Meets
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The East African Standard (Nairobi)
OPINION
6 April 2008
Posted to the web 7 April 2008
Paul Ereng
Nairobi
The 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championship in Edinburgh Scotland, on Sunday saw Kenyans battle perennial long distance rival Ethiopia for both individual and team title.
The two East African neighbours proved to the rest of the world that they are still the kings and the queens of long distance running. Kenya faired well in the titles while Ethiopians claimed individual titles.
In the women category, the Dibaba sisters; Turinesh and the young Genzebe captured the individual crowns.
The senior men category saw a new men's record being set; the renowned Kenenisa Bekele became the first person to win the individual title six times. He surpassed the record he shared with John Ngugi and Paul Tergat both of Kenya before this race. Ibrahim Jeilan made it four for the Ethiopians when he snatched the junior title from the Kenyans.
Taking a critical look at our team's overall performance, one can clearly see that this was a very hard fought championship between the Ethiopians and Kenyans.
The Kenyan team, however, defeated the Ethiopians in the senior category when they gathered 39 points versus 105 points for the Ethiopians. The junior men also beat their Ethiopians rivals with a close margin of 21 to 28 points. In the senior women category the Ethiopians won but the Kenyans did not just let the Ethiopians take it easily; the results were 18 points Ethiopia and 22 points Kenya. The fight was the same on the junior women, where only two points separated the rivals.
I would like to point out that, although Kenya is a country of unlimited potential in the ability to run long distance races, the athletics administration need to apply foresight when it comes to selecting and preparing both the coaches and athletes for the international duties.
Currently and even in the past, the athletes undertook preparation process individually without any assistance from Athletics Kenya. Other than organising the weekend meets, the only time the federation steps in is when they hold the so-called National trials to select the team and coaches just a few weeks before the international assignment.
Technically speaking, it takes athletes a minimum of not less than six weeks before they adapt to a training program. Currently we send our team to residential camp three weeks before an international competition.
The federation needs to review its selection and preparation process if we need keep our place at the top.
Two things can clearly be drawn from this current athletics administration approach, either athletics administration does not understand the facts about training adaptation or they just want to harvest from where they did not sow.
A good harvest is realised by the farmers' foresight; when they plan and prepare properly for the season ahead.
In the preparation of the coming season land is prepared in advance, the timing of the rains with application of the right amount of farm inputs always produces high yield. It's not very different with team planning and preparation for national assignments.
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The writer won 800m gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and is now cross country head coach at the University of Texas, in the United States of America
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