In Kenya apart from Kasarani stadium and Nyayo stadium at the country’s capital Nairobi, sporting facilities are always existing in a sorry state even after allocation of millions of money its not always sure that the facility’s will be well done for the athletes to train.
For instance construction of the Kamariny stadium in Iten at a cost of Ksh287,837,775 began back on January 5, 2017 and was estimated to be complete in a period of eight months but after 5 years later and over 81 million Ksh later the stadium still remains a dirt track as the county government struggles to maintain it at least for the athletes to train in.
Enough of the rant about leadership and management of public funds and facilities in my beloved country Kenya. lets get back to the Lornah kiplagat training camp and track.
lornah Kiplagat High altitude training camp
I researched and was surprised that The High Altitude Training Centre is founded in 1999, the year i was born by Lornah Kiplagat.
Lornah Kiplagat is 4 times World Champion and she has held World records over 5 K, 10 Mile, 20 K and Half Marathon and competed for the Netherlands in the Athens (2004), Beijing (2008), and London (2012) Olympics.
The training camp is at an altitude of 2400 metres in Iten, 32km from Eldoret.I heard the governor of the area(Elgeyo marakwet county) saying that Iten hosts over 1000 foreign athletes training in Iten and among them are World Champions, Olympic Champions and World record holders.
The Centre is surrounded by miles of dirt roads, forest trails and roads perfect for running and mountain biking, lornah’s camp has a 25 m swimming pool this was famous one since it used to be the only one in the area for a long time, a fully equiped gym, a 400m all weather tartan track.
Lornah Kiplagat’s all weather track in Iten
From the year 2013 Iten area and Kenya in general had world class runners but yet we had no such a facility for them. Although it is a private facility, this was a good way to show appreciation and encouragement for Kenya’s future runners by Lornah Kiplagat.
The construction of the facility was very fast and at that time my mom had moved me and my brother to a private school located adjacently to the facility called Salaba Academy. I had moved to secondary school but I used to visit my brother still studying there.
The school was founded by a Boston marathon champion Christopher cheboiboch, He has won the Leipzig Marathon and the San Diego Marathon and was the runner-up at the 2002 New York City Marathon.
Unlike my rural home area in Uasin-Gishu, Iten area its difficult to find flat areas especially to build a track and the construction not only amazed me how it was fast done but also the locals From January 2013 to may 2013 the track was ready. I’m used to seeing government projects taking long.
I used to compare what was happening to the public Kipchoge stadium which looked dilapidated at that time to what Lornah had build. The opening of the facility government officials and international athletes were invited this confused many locals and many thought the government was involved in construction.
The planning of the track was done by Rob De Heer(Engineering contractor) who also did a track in Ethiopia for Kenenisa Bekele. For the first 21 days almost 31000cubic metres of soil was shifted to ensure the ground remains level. The tartan track which was used on the track was imported through the port of Mombasa. The project planned budget for Lornah was at 100,000,000 kenyan shillings but I don’t really know if she actualized the plan fully or she will still construct more features.
For now the track which is at IAAF standards serves as a package for athletes in her camp in Iten, while those athletes wishing to train on a track and cannot afford a private one go for the kamariny stadium and kipchoge stadium at eldoret which is under renovation, I don’t know for how long.
We as Kenyans and our leaders really need to maintain our place as an athletics powerhouse and this can be achieved by enabling facilities such as these. I really don’t want to see a situation like 10 years ago where stadiums in our hometowns such as Kipchoge are used as grazing field for cows, toilets and as honeymoon suites for couples. While our competitors facilities improves in leaps and bounds.
I wrote a travel guide for Kenya you can check it out here or if you have questions contact me