•World Mountain Running Championship will be held on November 13 while the World Long Distance Mountain Running Championships will be staged on November 14.
•Angwenyi said Kenya will enter a team of 16 athletes for the World Mountain Running Championship and 12 in the World Long Distance Running championships.
Kenya will enter a strong team for the 36th edition of the World Mountain Running and World Long Distance Championships in November in Haria Lanzarote, Spain.
Athletics Kenya (AK) mountain running coordinator, Peter Angwenyi, said Kenya will field athletes in both the senior and junior categories during the championships.
World Mountain Running Championship will be held on November 13 while the World Long Distance Mountain race will take place on November 14.
The championships were initially scheduled for September but World Mountain Running Association postponed the events to November due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Yesterday, Angwenyi said Kenya will enter a team of 16 athletes for the World Mountain Running Championship and 12 in the World Long Distance Running.
He said Kenya intends to enter a preliminary team in a bid to beat the September 13 deadline. The deadline for entering the final team is November 2.
Angwenyi, who is also the AK Nyanza South region chairman, said Kenya will be seeking to reclaim the women’s individual and team title which the country won in 2018. Lucy Wamboi Murigi became the first African woman to win the event. She had earlier in 2017 won silver.
Last year, Kenya and other African nations did not enter teams for the event which was held in Villa La Angostura, Argentina-the first time it was held outside Europe due to visa restrictions.
“We are targeting both the individual and team titles because we have good mountain runners,” said Angwenyi in an interview yesterday.
He expressed his hopes that the coronavirus pandemic situation would have improved by November. International flights into and out of the country are expected to resume on August 1, thereby opening the country to the rest of the world, according to President Uhuru Kenyatta.
WMRA secretary Tomo Sarf announced that the World Cup 2020 has been cancelled while the 2020 World Masters Championships scheduled for Telfes in Austria will now be held in 2021.
Sarf added that the WMRA International U18 Cup will be held in Ambleside in England on October 17. Haria Lanzarote, Spain is one of the least affected regions by coronavirus pandemic, according to Sarf.
“Since our visit in February, our colleagues in Lanzarote have worked hard to organise a great and safe sports event especially now that we know more about the development of Covid-19 and how to take precautions,” he added. Haria in North Lanzarote is also known as the ‘valley of a thousand palm trees’