The race has attracted 20,000 participants led by veteran and former world marathon record holder Catherine Ndereba competing for Kshs 8m prize money on offer for the five categories.PHOTO/File
NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 27 – Athletes caught cheating at the 14th edition of the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon will be dealt with according to the IAAF rules, Athletics Kenya president Lt-Gen (Rtd) Jackson Tuwei announced ahead of the Sunday event.
The annual charity race has in the past two editions witnessed cheats and Tuwei alongside the organizers said stern action will be taken to those caught cheating.
Last year, Julius Njogu was nabbed at the finish line after cheating his way into second place by hiding among the crowd and only joining in with the race with one kilometre to go.
“We have a complete database and a fine system of monitoring results. We have the chip timing system which is authenticated by the results received from AK officials. There will be checks against cheating in the route where cyclist, leader cars as well as judges alongside course will keep an eye,” Tuwei declared.
“We caught some cheats last year and we followed that case very seriously. There is full penalty as prescribed by the IAAF where our governing body subscribes to and it can lead to ban.”
“I advise everybody that it’s not right to cheat because you are creating unfair competition to others, we want to have a fair competition,” the AK boss added.
The race has attracted 20,000 participants led by veteran and former world marathon record holder Catherine Ndereba competing for Kshs 8m prize money on offer for the five categories.
The 10km race has the highest number of participants with 8,000 confirmed, the half marathon has7,000 athletes, the 5km family run has 3,000 while 700 will battle it out in the elite full marathon.
The race will see major roads in the capital city affected on Sunday with the National Police Service releasing the traffic flow plan to minimize disruption on the race day.
Nairobi Traffic Commandant Leonard Katana said traffic to and out of the city will be mainly diverted to alternative roads as the roads along the designated marathon route will remain closed between 4am and 1pm.
“The affected roads include sections of Mombasa road, Uhuru Highway, Upper Hill and Forest road. Within the CBD Kenyatta Avenue and sections of Haile Selasie and University Way will remain closed until 11:30am,” Katana said.
“Traffic will be routed to industrial area, Jogoo road. Landhies road, Globe Cinema round about, James Gichuru and Mbagathi Way. The roads that will remain closed include Uhuru Highway, Haile Selassie Avenue, Kenyatta Avenue, Harambee Avenue, Mombasa road up to Enterprise road and part of Lang’ata Road.”
The event’s Local Organizing Committee chairman, Peter Gitau expressed satisfaction with the preparations for this year’s race saying the decision to open registration early has enabled the organizers to plan well.
“For the first time, all registrations have been done online. This has enabled us prepare a clean and detailed database ahead of the race.”
This year’s event has raised about Kshs 40m which will be channeled to the seeing is Believing project.
