NAIROBI, Kenya, December 18- The Government has denied authenticity of a leaked report of the performance of the national team at the London Olympics that appeared in online media on Monday.
Commissioner for Sport, Gordon Oluoch, declared the Sports Ministry were yet to release the much-awaited report ordered by Kenya’s Head of State, Mwai Kibaki, in the immediate aftermath of the dismal performance by the nation.
“As far as I’m concerned, we have not released or leaked out the report and it is among the things we are looking forward to clearing before we break for the Holidays,” Oluoch said on Monday.
“I have received information there is a version in the media and cannot comment on it since the minister is yet to release it formally. Therefore, the details contained therein are speculation,” he added.
According to an article on the SportsNewsArena website, the National Olympics Committee of Kenya (Nock) absolved their officials from blame instead channeling the responsibility on the shoulders of Athletics Kenya (AK), individual athletes and local media.
According to the post, AK incited the athletes, especially mid and long distance runners to boycott a planned Pre-Olympics camp in the British City of Bristol organized by Nock that ultimately led to lack of acclimatization when the track and field program started on Sept. 3.
“It was in the course of investigating the reasons as to why Athletics Kenya were against the team training in Bristol that we discovered that the chairman of Athletics Kenya had in 2010 signed an MOU with the city of Bedford for pre-Olympic training camp,” the leaked report alleges.
When contacted, Nock Executive Officer, Stephen Soi, who was the CEO of Team Kenya in London said he was not aware who was responsible for releasing the report.
“I have contacted my secretary F K Paul and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry but they are not aware how the report landed in the media.”
“We presented the report to the ministry a long time ago and it is up to them to release the document,” Soi, who was implicated as one of the reasons there was acrimony in the Kenyan camp leading to the below par showing, said.
The give away document says Soi, who was in charge of accreditation and accommodation arrangement was responsible for some of the mess but exonerates him from culpability over the overall performance.
London women 5,000m silver winner and 10,000m bronze medallist, Vivian Cheruiyot, was accused by the report of flying to a rage when her spouse and training partner, Moses Kiplagat, was denied accommodation at the Olympics Village trashed the claims.
“They can publish what they want but Soi and his team knows exactly who was responsible for causing disunity in the camp. As far as I’m concerned, my spouse and I had nothing to do with de- motivating the whole team,” said Cheruiyot.
“We had made the request well in advance and for them to turn around and accuse us of being the problem if that is what they are saying is wrong,” the double World Champion spoke from Eldoret asserted.
Other damning allegations in the report indicate that AK knew some of the top athletes including Beijing 2008 men 1500m champion were injured before London and they failed to take adequate measures.
Kenya won two gold medals, four silver and five bronze medals in a performance that received round condemnation.
CLARIFICATION- In our earlier version of this post, we published that Evelyn Watta was an editor of SportsNewsArena and she posted their Olympic report story. We have since established that she is a Senior Writer at the website and is not involved in posting articles at the said site.
We take this earliest opportunity to unreservedly apologise for any distress caused to Ms Watta over the claims and hereby set the record straight. The offending bit has been removed from the report.
