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Kenya selects strong team for Tanzania Athletics

Xinhua, April 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

Kenya has selected a strong team for the Eastern Africa Athletics Junior Championships, which will be held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from April 19.

The Eastern Africa Athletics Junior Championships will attract teams from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Zanzibar.

The event, which is open to athletes aged 18 and below is the elementary competition for the Africa Athletics as it prepares the teams for the World Under-20 Championships, which will be held in Nairobi in 2017.

Barnaba Korir, the Chairman of the Kenya Youth Committee, said they expect the team to do well in Dar es Salaam as they start their search for athletes to carry the country' s flag at the global championships coming to Nairobi in 2017.

"We will host the World Youth Under 20 Championships in Nairobi in June 2017. But it is from these athletes that we expect to select the team and that is why we are taking this competition serious," Korir said.

"We are preparing for a season that is full of top competition including the Olympics and we must get our act right if the country is to continue to reign in the sport," he added.

This comes even as the country missed to deadline to amend its laws to incorporate World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code.

Korir said while the threat of banning is real, the Kenyan parliament, which is in recess for two weeks, can redeem itself and pass the law before the WADA Special Ethics Committee reviews the Kenya case before its sitting on May 12.

National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) Chairman Kipchoge Keino said he is worried the country may be locked out of the Rio Olympics but said once parliament passes the law when it resumes business on April 19, it will be reconsidered by WADA as having complied with the code.

Korir congratulated the team that was selected for the Dar es Salaam event and asked them to do their best in training and competition. Endit