Team Kenya coach targeting improved performance in Gaborone relays
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Reading Time: 2min | Sat. 02.05.26. | 13:00
The competition serves as a qualifier to the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest in September and next year’s World Athletics Championships in Beijing
Team Kenya head coach to the World Athletics Relays in Gaborone, Botswana set for this weekend, Stephen Mwaniki, believes the country will perform well.
Kenya has struggled in past editions, but Mwaniki is confident this could change. During the inaugural event in Nassau, Bahamas, in 2024, Kenya claimed her first and last gold medals, all of which were won in middle-distance relay events.
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However, the championships now focus on sprints after World Athletics removed middle-distance races. But after weeks of training during which some athletes achieved good times, especially at the World Athletics Continental Tour, expectations are high that they will win medals.
"I don't want to promise how many medals or what colour they will be, but the mood in the camp is the best it has ever been," said Mwaniki ahead of the team's departure to Botswana.
The competition serves as a qualifier to the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest in September and next year’s World Athletics Championships in Beijing.
During the pre-event press conference on Friday, 1 May, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe reinforced the significance of the competition, coming to Africa for the first time, and its journey.
“I love moments like this because, by background, I'm a historian, and I like to be part of historic moments,” said Coe. “The very fact that these relays are coming to Africa for the first time means a lot to me and I know it means a lot to the continent.
This is a continent that has, over the last 50 years, delivered in such passion and such talent extraordinary athletes into our sport. The history of athletics in this continent is in large part the history of world athletics in the last half century."
He continued, “I'm delighted that this cements some really important assets. The first is the opportunity to use this event as a way of demonstrating that Africa has come of age – it is a continent where we genuinely want to share our championships; our big explosive moments.
I also want this to be inspirational. I want it to be an inspiration for the young people sitting in that stadium that are, I hope, going to be following in the footsteps of the great athletes that we have here.”
