Kenyan-Austrian sky-racer, Sabrina Wanjiku Simader, has expressed her distress at missing out on the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, which kick off in the month of February.
Simader, in a hard-hitting post on her social platforms, apportioned blame on the National Olympics Committee of Kenya (NOCK) for failing to fund her preparations.
She went on to reveal that she had barely prepared for the international showpiece which kicks off on February 4, 2021.
“Unfortunately I‘m not able to represent Kenya at the Olympics Games,” stated Simader.
“They (NOCK) promised to finance my team in the preparation season especially the speed camps, which is my main discipline.”
“Unfortunately I‘ve never trained it in the preparation seasons before, only some super-g, but never on World cup level slopes. Without a budget we can’t afford a speed training camp,” Simader went on.
Simader revealed that she had discussions with NOCK, but could not get the Olympics organizers to deliver funding in good time, despite NOCK imploring her to keep training.
“This is a very unfair strategy for me as an athlete and my team who works 100% to enable me to race at the FIS, Europacups, Worldcups, World Championships and Olympics. At the end we pay the preparation by ourselves,” Simader lamented.
Simader stands out as the first female Alpine skier in history to represent Kenya at the Winter Olympics. She represented Kenya at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.
The 24-year-old was born in Kilifi but moved to Austria at the age of three where she picked up the sport. She was named the African European Sports Woman of the year in 2017 and was featured in the African Forbes “30 under 30” in 2019.