NAIROBI, Kenya, March 7 – The International Athletics Associations Federation (IAAF) is targeting to train 200 technical officials to officiate in the forthcoming World Under-18 Championships to be staged July in Nairobi.
The technical officials are being trained at the IAAF Regional centre based at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.
This is the second time the course is being undertaken after the first which was conducted in 2010 for the Africa Senior Athletics Championships that was staged in Nairobi with 100 technical officials being trained for that continental masterpiece.
The World Under-18 Local Organising Committee (LOC) technical director Ibrahim Hussein Kipkemboi said they trained the first batch of 30 officials on February 27-March 3 and the second batch will report for the course on March 19.
The officials who were being trained by the Confederation of Africa Athletics Association (CAA) Vice President Vivian Gungaram who is also in charge of Competitions and Technical issues will be assigned various roles during the world fiesta.
Hussein, who is also the IAAF Regional Director, said they wanted to ensure that Kenya has adequate technical personnel to efficiently handle the championships.
He said they were collaborating with Athletics Kenya (AK) in the training where the local governing body was availing names to centre for training.
“We sent an invite to AK who in turn selected the officials drawn from their affiliates. The selection was not done by the regional centre as that is not within our mandate as our obligation is to provide training,” said Hussein.
Among the technical officials who were trained in the first batch Japheth Kemei, coach to Ferguson Rotich, the 1982 Africa100m champion Alice Adala, the 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games Kenya’s team manager Richard Lebo, AK Universities and Colleges branch secretary general, Edward Muema.