Kenya to put more emphasis on sportspeople-oriented policies

Kenya will put more emphasis on sportspeople-oriented policies as opposed to those rules that favor only sports managers. Kenyan Cabinet Secretary for Sports Hassan Wario has said he will apply the Sports Act which was enacted in January 2013 to ensure that the country's sportsmen and women got the full benefits of their input. "For a long time sports policies in Kenya have tended to favour administrators at the expense of sportspeople who are the major stakeholders in the industry," Wario said. "With the full implementation of the Sports Act, this is bound to change because the Act is oriented towards sportsmen and women." The cabinet secretary was speaking on Tuesday in Nairobi during the launch of the 4th edition of the Sotokoto Safari Half Marathon which is scheduled for July 7 in Nairobi. The cabinet secretary promised that a sports museum will be constructed in honor of the past and present heroes the country has produced, some of who have defied adversities to emerge at the top. For a long time, sportspeople in Kenya have taken a back seat as sports managers skimmed all the cream arising from the activity. It has not been unusual for them to sometimes attend international events minus training and competing kits while accompanying officials are fully clad in sports regalia. During the 2011 All Africa Games in Maputo, the national netball team was forced to play its matches in T-shirts of different colors because the team was not provided with playing uniform. In the past, some sportspeople have been omitted from participating in international events despite qualifying because their places have been taken up by joy riders in the name of officials. During last year's Olympic Games in London, officials negotiated for the Kenyan athletics team to train in the English city of Bristol without consulting the runners, many of whom refused opining that the weather there at moment was not conducive to raining due to excess rainfall. Back home, the Olympic team was abandoned by officials who flew to London ahead of them and left to their own devices at the Olympic residential camp with no one to take charge of them. The minister's pledge has therefore been welcomed in sporting circles as a measure that will go a long way into addressing some of these anomalies. The Sotokoto Safari Half Marathon was launched in 1999 and aims at reaching at youth through sports and is sponsored by Mitsubishi Group of Companies alongside other Japanese corporate organizations. The event co-ordinator Douglas Wakiihuri who is the first Kenyan runner to win an international event said over 200 runners from outside Kenya will participate in the event. "The marathon represents youth sports industry in Kenya by advancing and reinforcing human values in addition to actively participating in development, education and the development of leaders," said the 1987 world marathon champion. The event has been used to discover some of the best marathon runners at present including the world's fastest marathoner Geoffrey Mutai, Phyllis Ongori and David Tarus amongst others.