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The Kenyan coach has urged Kenyans to avoid quick criticism of athletes' performances on the global stage as he highlighted that most criticisms lack full understanding.
Veteran athletics coach Bernard Ouma has explained why Kenyans should not be quick to criticize their athletes when they perform on the global stage like the Paris Olympic Games or World Championships.
Ouma, who coaches the 2019 world 1500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot, explained that most people speak from a point of less or no information. He told Citizen TV that at the Paris Olympic Games, Kenya was being represented in six disciplines but people decided to go for the track and field athletes despite the medals they won.
From the Olympics, athletics was the only event that won Kenya medals, with four gold medals from Beatrice Chebet (2), Faith Kipyegon and Emmanuel Wanyonyi. Faith Kipyegon and Ronald Kwemoi won Kenya silver medals. The bronze medals were won by Mary Moraa, Faith Cherotich, Abraham Kibiwott, Benson Kipruto and Hellen Obiri.
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“I’ll say two words, if it was criticism done from a point of information, then that is okay but remember track and field is a process where you go through the preliminaries, heats, semis then the final. And again, you may not judge the Olympics with two finals, you need to have a holistic judgement on the championship. Maybe you might judge a day to the last final or the day of the last event. We managed to bag four medals from that,” Bernard Ouma said.
“Secondly, when you of return on investment I think that’s an overstatement because the cost of winning a medal according to the Americans and UK, this is statistical, was about 50-60% Euros. When talking about return on investment you might want to invest more but if you look at what NOCK did, it was such a massive job.”
He added that Kenya managed to send a lean team, excluding some of the crucial personnel like the nutritionist and psychologist. The veteran coach pointed out that the coaches also play a huge role in how athletes perform and not all the criticism should be directed to the athletes.
Ouma explained that the government needs to get involved in supporting the coaches to pursue further studies and gain more knowledge. He singled out the sprints coaching and revealed that there is a lot that needs to be done.
“Producing an athlete requires huge teamwork which involves scientists, we also need other people like the physio, the medical team, the psychologist, and nutritionist. When you see the team that went to Paris, they did not have a psychologist and nutritionist because the list was really shrunk because of some technicalities,” he said.
“We need other support from the government in terms of coaching and upscaling because people are talking about performance and the athletes but they are not talking about the coaches and people behind the athletes.”
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Timothy Cheruiyot's track rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen has given a candid explanation on why the Kenyan might struggle in his move to the 5000m.
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