S. OchiengWorld Athletics boss Seb Coe expected in Nairobi on Tuesday for brief tour
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Reading Time: 2min | Tue. 03.01.23. | 11:35
This will be Coe's first visit to Kenya since the 2021 World Under-20 Championship held in Nairobi.
World Athletics President Seb Coe is scheduled to arrive in Nairobi on Tuesday afternoon on a semi-official visit during which he will meet with various key personalities in the country.
According to the Nation, the Double Olympic Gold medalist, who will be making his first visit to Kenya since the 2021 World Under-20 Championships hosted at the Moi Inernational Sports Centre in Kasarani, is expected to land at around 2pm with Athletics Kenya President Jack Tuwei confirming his visit.
Excited to see this year’s second largest athletics event @WAU20Nairobi21 get underway today after meeting athletes, technical delegates, volunteers & media preparing yesterday. Over 100 countries and almost 1000 athletes will be competing over the next 5 days. #WAU20Nairobi21 pic.twitter.com/29WPdZASMA
— Seb Coe (@sebcoe) August 18, 2021
Tuwei also confirmed that the federation will make time for the World Athletics President to address members of the fourth estate.
“We will make arrangements for the briefing at some point on one of the days during his tour as he has accepted to meet the media. He will be in the country for three days and again stop over on his way back from his next destination,” Tuwei is quoted saying.
Coe’s visit to the country comes at a time when Kenya evaded what had been widely reported as a possible ban by the world athletics governing body owing to the spiraling cases of doping cases that have were witnessed in 2022.
At the start of December last year, Coe pointed out to the government’s move of increasing anti-doping funding with an allocation of 619 million shillings annually for the next five years helping Kenya avoid being sanctioned.
“Over the course of one year, 40% of all the positives recorded in doping tests in global athletics are in Kenya. This was not something the sport, and certainly not World Athletics, was prepared to sit and develop.
I particularly welcome the additional resource made available by the Government of Kenya in this fight. The only way that we can reduce the scale of this problem is a joint commitment across all the sports stakeholders in Kenya and of course World Athletics and its Athletics integrity unit,” Coe said after the World Athletics Council Meeting held in the Italian capital of Rome.
