In Rabat
Kenya’s Ferdinand Omanyala and South Africa’s Akani Simbine have been on the road for close to two months now, having launched their outdoor season at the Botswana Golden Grand Prix on April 12 in Gaborone before travelling to China for the opening Wanda Diamond League meetings in Xiamen and Shanghai-Keqiao and the World Athletics Relays Championships in Guangzhou.
They then both travelled to Atlanta, USA, for the Atlanta City Games street meet last week where Simbine maintained his season’s winning streak and sub-10 series of performances by winning the 100 metres race in a 2.3-metres-per-second-wind-aided 9.86 seconds, while Omanyala shattered the African record in the rarely-run 150 metres, clocking 14.70 seconds to add onto the continental 100m record that he holds at 9.77 seconds.
Such long spells away from home need strong mental focus and while Simbine loves his music, watching movies and series and following English Premier League giants Chelsea, Omanyala is a gaming enthusiast whose downtime is spent playing video games to get his mind off the sprints.
“I’m a big football lover, a Chelsea supporter and for music, I listen to anything that’s good… but outside the sport, I’m really a family guy and I like spending time with my family, watching movies and watching series…” Simbine said in a recent chat with Nation Sport.
“We spend a lot of time on the road and (outside competition) I like to chill, be at peace in a place of comfort… it’s not only Akani the athlete. There’s more to Akani.”
Omanyala is very much a family man too, but loves his video games off the track.
“As an athlete, when I get back to my room, I forget about athletics, because you can’t keep thinking athletics from morning to evening,” Omanyala explained his downtime on Friday at the Rabat Marriott Hotel while engaging with journalists at a media workshop organised here by World Athletics.
“I always carry my PlayStation and I have video games that I play and also the last three days before competition, I try and get out of the hotel and enjoy the local food like I want to do here in Rabat today. Because in Kenya I can’t do that… I can’t easily walk on the streets.
“I always try to distract myself and avoid just sitting in the room and putting a lot of pressure on myself thinking about the race. I like doing something different, like in China we did a lot of shopping away from athletics.”
The two African giants with contrasting styles clash here on Sunday for the fourth time this season in the 100m with Simbine leading 4-0 and Omanyala taking it easy, preferring to continue building his season gradually.
After bagging bronze at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing in March, Simbine has won all his outdoor meetings this season in sub-10 seconds times, beating Omanyala to the top podium spot in Gaborone (9.90), Shanghai-Keqiao (9.98) and Xiamen (9.99).
But Omanyala is taking everything in his stride, wary of the fact that this year’s season is pretty long, stretching to the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September.
“It has been a bit different starting the season outdoors because I have been doing indoors first since I started running as a professional,” Omanyala explained on Friday.
“But, of course, it was a long break from competition which made me come back more hungry and wanting to learn more and get more out of competition… One of the reasons why I skipped the indoors tour is that it’s a long season this year that runs until September and I feel it’s going on well so far.”
He explained how he has been handling the long spell away from home: “When you come out here, it’s basically work and you have to switch off everything and focus on what has brought you out here and this has really kept me going.
"The advantage is that I’ve been having competitions back-to-back which helps me to stay more focused because there’s no weekend that has passed without competition and this has helped because once you finish one race, you are focusing on the next one and trying to correct mistakes you made in the previous one.”
Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya celebrates after winning Heat 2 in the 100m men's race at the Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France on August 03, 2024.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
In contrast, Simbine feels starting the season running 60m indoors has helped kick-start his outdoor 100m execution which has been nothing but spectacular, crowned by a gold medal for South Africa at the World Relays in Guangzhou in the 4x100m relay.
“We look at the indoors as part of my training, because there are some aspects of my race that I needed to work on,” Simbine explains.
“I need to work on these aspects when I’m in an actual race that’s why we started indoors. There is a benefit to that but, again, it makes the season longer.”
Rabat is the final meeting away from home for Omanyala ahead of next weekend’s Absa Kip Keino Classic at the Ulinzi Sports Complex.
Bizarrely, it will be Omanyala’s first 100m at Ulinzi.
“I have only done a 400m at Ulinzi so I don’t know what to expect. I hope the Kip Keino Classic will be fine with the same quality of competition we had at Nyayo National Stadium and Kasarani in previous years. My best venue is Kasarani but we just hope that next week at Ulinzi will be fine.”
Omanyala tells his fans to rest easy because the first three big races of this season - in which he lost to Simbine - were mainly to work on various aspects of his race with the long season in mind.
“We’ve been trying to make sure we get race model perfectly well. We wanted to do it at high level so that when we get to high level competition, it’s easier and you are just focusing on you, and not on your opponent.
“Going into this weekend here in Rabat, it’s the same goal -- to get into the rhythm of competition that we can continue building on.”
Besides Simbine, two-time Diamond League champion Fred Kerley, the “bad boy” of athletics is in the mix, alongside Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo of Botswana.
But this doesn’t rattle Omanyala: “I’ve beaten everyone in this field before… I just ran an African record in the 150 metres (in Atlanta) so I’m coming in hot. But I don’t like talking about my competitors.
“It’s still early in the season and we don’t want to make the same mistake we made in Paris (Olympics) last year. Going into Paris we under-raced and so by the time we were getting into Paris for the Olympics, we were still getting into the rhythm.”
Also in Sunday's Rabat Diamond League meeting -- officially known as the Meeting International Mohammed VI - Kenya’s Olympic champions Beatrice Chebet, Emmanuel Wanyonyi, Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo, Femke Bol of the Netherlands and home star and two-time World and Olympic steeplechase champion Soufiane El Bakkali will be the main attractions alongside the men’s 100m field.
Dutchwoman Bol launches her season in the 400m hurdles while Tebogo will run his 200m specialty alongside the 100m while Wanyonyi has entered the 800m. Double Olympic champion Chebet will attack the 3,000m.
