The National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) wants national teams equipment for 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games in camp as early as next month.
Kenya intends to take an estimated 200 athletes for the “Club” Games due July 28, to August 8, 2022, in the United Kingdom.
The committee through their enriched Elite Performance Commission wants the modernisation of the national teams training achieved beyond the “Club” Games in the UK.
This is part of the federations president Paul Tergat’s legacy plan for the year 2022-2024 where his executive is geared towards implementing structures that will improve their High Performance Training Centre further.
“We want to start the modernisation with the Birmingham Commonwealth Games where outdated training methods will be scrapped with teams being given modern equipment that suit their trade.
“We saw how the women’s volleyball team upped their training with modern training equipment. Rugby sevens have always been advanced in their training and that is what we want with the rest,” NOC-K secretary general Francis Mutuku stated.
Mutuku added that they will ensure that the government provides physical infrastructure.
The NOC-K secretary general told federations to prepare to name their tentative sides for the Commonwealth Games early for training.
“Our target is to field strong teams and in numbers at the 2023 African Games, 2024 Paris Olympics and 2026 Youth Olympics,” Mutuku added.
He also noted that the federation and the Ministry of Sports were currently engaged in setting up the structures and systems for management of the Games.
“The Team is also currently developing the manual and budget for the Games and should be completed in a month’s time,” Mutuku stated.
Mutuku stated that the federation was projecting to get at least 20 medals of which six are expected to be gold.
NOC-K has written to the federations to start their respective qualification and selection processes.
Some disciplines will have direct qualifications including: swimming, athletics, badminton, boxing, cycling (road, track and Mountain Bike), gymnastics, judo, lawn bowls, squash, triathlon and wrestling.
Sports that will require qualification processes are table tennis, weightlifting, beach volleyball, hockey, netball – women, rugby sevens for both men and women.