World Athletics President Seb Coe hails Kenya's 'national obsession' with Athletics

Athletics 360

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe on Monday praised Kenya's 'national obsession' with Athletics at a year-end virtual conference with African Athletics journalists.

"It's not just a sport, it's not just a pastime, it's a national obsession. It's a passion!," said Seb Coe.

"When people close their eyes and think about Kenya, so often the first images they have is the Kenyan flag and your extraordinary array of talented athletes over the years," he added.

Coe spoke on a wide range of issues and was happy that World Athletics had tackled the Coronavirus-ravaged season well, managing to put together several top competitions, including the successful Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2020.

"The first objective we set ourselves (after the pandemic struck in March), which was an understandable one because we are an athlete-centred organization, was to do everything we possibly could to get the athletes back into training and then into competition," he explained.

"Secondly, because the Olympic Games had been postponed, we needed to expedite our current review of the Olympic qualification standards and systems and release any changes we were making as quickly as possible to the athletes.

"To remove an Olympic Games has a knock-on effect, in our case, for five years and so it's really important that we were reorganising our calendar in a way that was respectful to other events, particularly for some of you in Africa who consider the Commonwealth Games to be a very high priority. While the crisis management in that department was taking place, we then had to maintain the focus of growing the sport in alignment with the strategic plan."

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