KDF’s Imeta closest world-class opposition for Omanyala locally
Samuel Imeta (left) and Ferdinand Omanyala pose with the clock after the final of the men's 100 metres races during the second leg of Athletics Kenya Track and Field Weekend Meeting at Nyayo National Stadium on February 25, 2023.
What you need to know:
- Competition between the two former rugby players is good for Kenyan athletics.
- They will push each other to greater heights as they inspire even more runners to take up the sprints.
The downside of living in a country blessed with so much sporting talent such as Kenya is that both the athletes and the fans slowly start taking the success for granted.
You begin to think that it is the natural order of things until other countries catch up with you, then you wonder just what happened.
In the midst of great athletics talent and unrivalled success, we are having that feeling in men’s 3,000 metres steeplechase, a race in which athletes from Ethiopia have knocked us off our pedestal, and we are now being trampled upon by one man from Morocco.
Morocco’s Soufiane El Bakkali has literally run away with both the world and Olympic Games titles at Kenya’s expense.
We even lost the steeplechase world record which Bernard Barmasai won for us years ago. I shall revisit this at length at the appropriate time.
A similar feeling has struck Great Britain, the kind that is particularly annoying because it cuts across track and field events for the country.
Great Britain will take smaller squads to future championships in a major selection overhaul designed to prioritize potential medalists because rain, which started beating the country’s athletes in track and field at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, has grown into a torrent, carrying with it medals downstream.
Team Great Britain did not win a single gold medal in track and field at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics for the first time at the Games since Atlanta 1996, and the country’s athletics chief, Jack Buckner, has said he will be more “ruthless” when picking teams for the 2023 World Championships and 2024 Olympics “because the old system was too soft and some athletes just made up the numbers.”
But my land is Kenya.
It is always an honour watching our stars competing at their best on home soil.
On Saturday, Africa’s fastest man, Ferdinand Omanyala, compete before his home fans for the first time since winning gold medal at the Commonwealth Games last year in Birmingham.
And he never disappoints. At the second Athletics Kenya Weekend Meeting held at Nyayo National Stadium, Omanyala won his heat in men’s 100 metres in 9.86 seconds, his world leading time sending fans into a frenzy inside the stadium.
After animated celebrations, the African 100m record holder promised fans sub-9.8 seconds in the final, which he fell just shy of delivering the next day when he won the final in a world-leading time of 9.81.
It was a good feeling seeing Kenya Defence Forces runner Samuel Imeta run the 100m under 10 seconds for the first time in his life to qualify for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in 9.94sec.
Last year, World Athletics set 10sec as the qualifying standard in men’s 100m for the global track and field championships.
No offence to the other local sprinters, but I feel Imeta is the closest thing to world-class opposition for Omanyala.
A semi-finalist from the 2022 Commonwealth Games and a member of Kenya’s 4x100m gold medal winning team at the 2022 Africa Athletics Championships, Imeta is the only Kenyan apart from Omanyala to run the 100m race in under 10 seconds in a championship held in conditions meeting World Athletics standards.
Competition between the two former rugby players is good for Kenyan athletics.
They will push each other to greater heights as they inspire even more runners to take up the sprints.
Moments before Omanyala and Imeta brought the house down at Nyayo National Stadium, a steeplechaser (name withheld) had been bragging for whoever cared to listen that he does not enter races which he can’t win.
He soon met his waterloo. In the afternoon session, he lined up in the final of the water and barriers race, and immediately shot to the front once the race had started.
After going over the water jump thrice, he fell to the back of the field and was lapped twice by the winner.
While finishing the race on his own two minutes later after all the competitors had finished fielding questions from journalists, he accelerated like one who had just spotted an opponent behind him while on the verge of winning an Olympics title, and got a thunderous applause from the main stand.
I’m sure there is one athlete who knows better as we head to the third Athletics Kenya Weekend Meeting in Thika on March 10 and 11.
