Local athletes miss IAAF scholarship

Local athletes are missing on a list of athletics who have been  been offered a scholarship to train at Eldoret High Performance Centre in Kenya by the International Athletics Association Federation (IAAF) Athletics Tanzania (AT) secretary general Suleiman Nyambui confirmed the development .

The six-month training initiated by the world athletics governing body to help African  countries who do not have top world athletes and also countries  which have never produced an athlete or qualified for either World Championship or Olympic Games in the past few years

Nyambui said IAAF has established a scholarship programme, the IAAF B Standard project, which will enable athletes who have the potential but lack appropriate athletics environment to develop their competitive performance. By training with provision of the necessary support that may not be available in the athlete’s own country they will be prepared to, at minimum, achieve the B Standard..

Nyambui said the country is qualified to benefit from the IAAF program but wondered why they are omitted on the list

“Of course we did not submitted   names of our athletes for the scholarship, but we did that because the international body did not invite us” he said

He said the scholarship would have helped some local athletes to fine-tune their talent before the London Olympic Games

In a related development Nyambui said inadequate finances has hindered his association from hosting the London qualify games in the country and instead his association has advised all athletes to seek qualify tournament elsewhere.

He said if they had money AT would have hosted the national championship at the national stadium so that local athletes can qualify for the London games.

Nyambui said the national stadium has all facilities and all athletic tourneys held at the facility are recognized by IAAF.

“ We really wanted to have our own  London qualifying championship but we don’t have money to host such a big tourney , due to this we encourage our athletes to look for qualifying tourneys elsewhere ” he said.