The Kenyan duo of visually impaired triathletes, James Njoroge and Juliet Mwongeli, are all set for a dream debut at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games slated for July.
The duo landed the coveted slots after earning a bipartite commission invitation — a method whereby Commonwealth Games federations get additional places for the visually impaired athletes in consultation with their world governing bodies after applying for special consideration.
The triathletes have been training at the YMCA and Ngong area in preparation for the Games under Ted Mwatha and Gloria Kisiangani.
Team manager Rommel Lukila said he is confident of a splendid outing in Birmingham, come July.
“The Kenya Triathlon Federation hopes to get at least two more slots from the remaining qualifying championships,” Lukila said, adding that the duo will have an opportunity to gauge their preparedness ahead of their trip when they flex muscles with other athletes this weekend.
“Triathletes will converge at the Turtle Bay in Watamu this weekend for the zonal competition where Mwongeli and Njoroge will sharpen their skills,” he said.
The development comes a week after the National Olympics Committee said it had adopted a comprehensive plan to beef up the Kenyan contingent with more disciplines at the Birmingham Games.
NOC-K President Paul Tergat revealed the plans during a ceremony dubbed '100 days to Birmingham 2022 Launch' that took place at the KICC viewpoint in Nairobi a week ago.
“We want to see to it that we grow more sports in the country and that's why we had a meeting with the president of Gymnastics International,” he added.
“We are going to engage the budding talent and facilitate them going forward. We are looking forward to seeing to it that in the future, the multi-sports games will help us bag a diversity of medals at the Commonwealth Games,” Tergat said.
Tergat spoke a day after the NOCK Executive board hosted the International Gymnastics Federation President Morinari Watanabe from Japan at the NOC-K offices.
Their meeting delved into ways of helping the country to set up structures for grassroots mobilization of gymnasts.
“Gymnastics is one of the biggest summer games and we believe we can find better ways of growing the sport within our country so as to expand our medals,” Tergat said.
However, NOC-K secretary-general Francis Mutuku said they would need more time to secure the technical support needed to grow the less popular sports disciplines to maturity.
“We are training our sights on the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. We can confidently say we will be able to have Team Kenya participating in these games,” Mutuku said.
