Moraa keen for defend Budapest gold in Tokyo World Championships
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Reading Time: 2min | Fri. 12.09.25. | 20:30
The confident 25-year-old leads a Kenyan quartet in the two-lap discipline next week
Kenya’s middle-distance runner Mary Moraa says she is confident and ready to go in Tokyo, the scene where she will be seeking to defend her World Athletics Championships gold medal next week.
Moraa, 25, is part of four Kenyan athletes who will take part in the women’s 800m event in the Japanese capital, and believes the work she has put in over the last year and months will hold her in good stead.
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Speaking to Telecomasia before jetting out for the global championships slated for 13-21 September, the Paris Olympics bronze medalist said: “I am confident and ready to go. I want to defend my title in Tokyo.”
Moraa, who will be taking part in her fourth World Championships event, enters the field off the back of a pretty underwhelming season, based on her previous campaigns, having won just one 800m race outside Kenya.
On a year she dipped her toes in the inaugural Grand Slam Track, the 2022 Commonwealth Games gold medalist has had to make do with finishes lower down the pecking order, with sources indicating that she was dealing with a medical issue that has since been addressed.
Speaking of her prospects to repeat her gold-medal-winning heroics in Budapest two years ago, she said: “I know it is not going to be easy because we have seen the girls run really well this season, but I believe I have prepared well for it.”
Among those to have run well includes her major competitor Keely Hodgkinson, who after staying out with two hamstring injuries, set the world leading time of 1:54.74 in the Lausanne Diamond League.
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She, alongside Britain’s training mate Georgia Hunter Bell, and Olympic silver medalist Tsige Duguma will be the names to look out for, but Moraa, who rounds up as Team Kenya deputy captain, thinks differently.
“As Team Kenya, we have also worked very well in training and our determination is to bring those medals back home,” Moraa, who is alongside Lilian Odira, Sarah Moraa and Vivian Chebet in the discipline, said.
“We will go to Tokyo to fight for a good performance.”
The quartet get their championships underway on Thursday, 18 September, when they take part in the heats at 1358 EAT.
