Kenya‘s athletics team launched their campaign at the African Games from the wrong blocks, losing the women’s 5,000 metres and men’s 3,000m steeplechase titles to Ethiopia on the opening day on Monday.
Is this yet another warning ahead of the Paris Olympic Games?
Kenya collected 31 medals: 11 gold, 10 silver and 10 bronze from the 2019 African Games.
Athletics contributed the most with 10 gold, seven silver and three bronze. The national women's volleyball team, Malkia Strikers, won the other gold medal.
Two female athletes saved the country during the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
Faith Kipyegon won a double in 1,500m and 5,000m, with Mary Moraa going for the 800m crown in a championship where Kenyan men failed to win an event for the first time since the inaugural 1983 Helsinki.
On Monday, the men’s 3,000m steeplechase title returned to Ethiopia when 2022 World Under-20 3,000m silver medallist Samuel Firewu claimed victory, edging out Kenya’s Amos Serem and Simon Koech, who settled for silver and bronze respectively.
Serem won the 2021 World Under-20 3,000m steeplechase title in Nairobi, where Firewu finished fifth.
Firewu would snatch silver at the 2022 World Under-20 event, where his fellow countryman Samuel Duguna won.
Ideally, based on experience, Serem was the favourite, especially after the Kenyan won the national trials, beating Koech, the 2023 Diamond League winner.
Firewu, who finished fifth at the 2022 Africa Athletics Championships, showed the Kenyans a clean pair of heels, winning in 8:24.30 ahead of Serem (8:25.77) and Koech (8:26.19).
Firewu recaptured the title his compatriot Birhan Getahun won last in 2011, a feat that came for the first time since the Games started in 1965.
Kenya and Ethiopia have dominated steeplechase at the African Games, with the Kenyans winning in 11 editions while Ethiopia have claimed two - 2011 and 2024.
Athletics administrators in the country must realise steeplechase is no longer Kenya’s exclusive event now that Ethiopia have both the African Games and Africa 3,000m steeplechase titles.
While Moroccan Soufiane El Bakkali, who holds both the Olympic and world titles, looks favourite to retain his Olympics gold in Paris, his biggest threat isn’t a Kenyan but Ethiopia's Lamecha Girma, who broke the world record after almost two decades last year in 7:52.11.
"We need to walk the talk. We have said many times that we need to put these athletes in camp, especially in steeplechase, but nothing has been forthcoming,'' said head coach Julius Kirwa. "I think we are not serious...it's as simple as that."
Ethiopians had dominated to win the women’s 5,000m titles in four successive editions before Margaret Chelimo (2015 Congo Brazzaville) and Lilian Kasait 2019 Rabat) halted the run.
In Accra, Ethiopian teenagers Medina Eisa, Birtukan Molla and Melknat Wudu swept the podium places in 5,000m, relegating world 3,000m steeplechase record holder Beatrice Chepkoech to fourth place.
Chepkoech won the Kenyan trials hours after arrival from the World Indoor Championships, where she claimed bronze in 3,000m.
Mary Mananu, who finished second, was left behind owing to stringent anti-doping requirements, having not done out-of-competition tests.
While Kenya prides itself as a powerhouse in distance running, the depth has been exposed with top athletes like Beatrice Chebet, Kasait and Margaret Chelimo, among others, opting to focus on World Cross Country Championships.
Stringent anti-doping measures now leave no room for unknown athletes to emerge and compete as anyone not in the testing pool cannot represent the country.
Elsewhere, the world 800m champion Mary Moraa guided teenager Jackline Nanjala in qualifying for the women’s 400m semi-finals. Moraa won her heat in 52.18 while Nanjala (54.11) finished third in her heat behind Rhoda Njobvu (52.03, Zambia) and Fatou Gaye (53.26, Senegal) to all qualify.
National 800m champion Alex Ng'eno (1:46.84) won his heat, while Aaron Kemei Cheminingwa (1:46.69) wound up second in his heat to qualify for the semi-finals.
