Athletics Kenya officials have lauded schools for helping them fight age cheating among junior athletes across the country.
However, there is a problem when it comes to school dropouts as well as arid and semi-arid regions, where documentation has been tricky for many athletes.
AK officials led by head coach Robert Ngisirei and athletes’ representative Milcah Chemos Cheywa said age-cheating has reduced among athletes unlike in the past.
The officials were speaking in Eldoret on the second day of a series of anti-doping seminars that started on Monday in Kitale.
Chemos, the former 3,000m steeplechase world champion, said the level of age cheating has reduced because the majority of junior athletes are in school and they are able to get proper documentation from various institutions.
“For the last four years, we have not had many age-cheating cases because when athletes hand in documents, we confirm with their respective schools,” said Chemos.
She told the athletes that running in the junior cadre for a long time because of age cheating will also affect their career once they transition to senior cadre and their performance will go down.
“We have had many challenges of some athletes competing in juniors for years. However, we have enough data to help us fight such menace before we take the team to competitions,” she said.
Youth coach Ngisirei pointed out that fighting age cheating has been a continuous process and it is almost coming to an end.
"We only have this problem with the athletes from arid and semi-arid areas who are not in school," Ngiserei noted.
He added that there is a difference between training an under 20 or under 18 and that of the senior athlete.
“The training we give to these juniors is different from seniors and If one decides to remain in junior ranks, he or she will never grow in the career. The senior training is so intense unlike juniors,” he explained.
