Kamworor, Aprot set for Rio wildcards, 3 walkers make Olympics

Africa Race walking champions, Grace Wanjiru and Samuel Gathimba have made the Rio 2016 squad while Athletics Kenya (AK) is considering awarding world 10,000m silver medallist, Geoffrey Kipsang Kamworor and freshly-minted continental champion Alice Aprot wildcard selection for the Olympics .

Simon Wachira who finished fifth in Durban 2016 is the third race walker who will compete in Brazil the federation announced in Nairobi on Monday.

At the same time, African men High jump champion, Matthew Sawe, will be given another chance to meet the Olympics standard of 2.29m for inclusion in the final squad that will be named on Friday following the two-day Trials in Eldoret.

Africa Race walking queen Wanjiru marked her record sixth victory in Durban on Sunday by smashing her own African record by a whooping five minutes when she stopped the clock in 1:30:43 to convince selectors to hand her a first Olympics ticket in her career.

Gathimba who also set a national record in Durban and Wachira will also be joining her for their Olympics debut after clocking 1:19:24 and 1:23:26 that are under the 1:24:00 Rio 2016 standard.

The verdict on whether to grant Kamworor, the two-time World Half Marathon champion and All Africa Games titleholder, Aprot who added the African women 10,000m with a world leading 30:26.94 in Durban direct entry without running at the Trials is still pending.

“We are going into a meeting to consider the athletes whom we are going to exempt from the Trials but be careful not to dilute the event.

“The walkers will just go for training after we name their coach in Eldoret, reason being; the Kipchoge Keino Stadium does not meet the walking race standards and we cannot subject them to another race considering the fact that they just ran,” AK president, Lt. Gen (Rtd) Jackson Tuwei told Citizen Digital.

“In the long distance races we are going to consider Kamworor and Aprot. The number of the exempted athletes will be known after the meeting with National Olympics Committee of Kenyaand the Local Organizing Committee for the trials,” the federation boss added.

Newly crowned African High Jump Champion Sawe missed the Olympics qualifying height by 0.08m will have another shot to make it early next month.

“I really hoped that he would qualified for the Olympics at Durban. However, AK is very interested in him and that’s why we have already taken him to the high performance center in Dakar, Senegal.

“We are also in talks with his coach whom we expect to give us a feed back by the end of the week then we shall know if he will travel to France to see if he can qualify before July 12,” Tuwei added.

The three race walkers bring the number of Kenyan athletes confirmed for the Rio Olympics to nine with AK having named six marathoners to the team in May.

London marathon champions, Eliud Kipchoge and Jemimah Sumgong headline the men and women marathon squads.

New York champion, Stanley Biwott and 2012 Boston winner, Wesley Korir complete the men line-up with Worlds silver medallist, Helah Kiprop and Paris titleholder, Visiline Jepkesho sealing the corresponding women’s team.