Kenya’s fall, rise and fall again in Olympic Games

In 2004, Kenya’s athletics empire was believed to be on its sunset days.

The poor performance at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and 2005 Athletics World Championships seemed  to lend credence to Kenya’s then dwindling fortunes.

Ethiopian athletes humiliated Kenyans with monotonous regularity with Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba being the two Ethiopian male and female athletes who comprehensibly boxed Kenyans out of the gold medals in the 5,000 and 10,000m races.

The question then was: has the Kenyan empire crumbled as a result of flouting the principles upon which it was built or has Ethiopia simply built a strong and better empire than Kenya’s?

However, Kenya’s strong showing at the Beijing Olympic Games and the 2011 Athletics World Championships in Daegu firmly placed it on the driving seat of athletics in Africa and the world.

Just as the country was beginning to celebrate its improved fortunes, the 2012 London Olympic Games beckoned where Kenya performed dismally, by the country’s standards that saw it bag  two gold medals out of a projected eight gold medals.  

Poor preparations 

In attempting to explain Kenya’s poor performance, athletics officials used to blame poor preparations of athletes and outdated equipment, athletics coach Stephen Mwaniki said on Monday.

By clinging to the poor preparation and poor equipment line, Mwaniki said, one wonders what equipment in addition to the normal spikes, vest and light training gear an athlete needed to win a race.

Athletics is not like cycling where the choice of a racing bicycle might mean the difference between winning and losing. Why did Kenya have to prepare well to get into the final but lack the preparation to win?  There must be some other explanation.

“The problem was in both strategic and tactical maneuvres in addition to the wrong frames of mind on the part of athletes,” Mwaniki told Xinhua recently.

Lost races