With the dust having settled on the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, USA, it would be appropriate to give a postmortem of Kenya’s performance considering that it is a powerhouse in athletics globally now that the Commonwealth Games have started in Birmingham, United Kingdom, yesterday.

Granted, the atmosphere is less than encouraging for sports lovers in Kenya since Oregon was not among the country’s best performances in the history of the championships even if we finished in the top 10 nations.

What is worrying as we start the games in the UK is that Kenyan sportsmen and women missed out on medals in the events they have been dominant in, including long and middle distance races as well as the 400m hurdles, 800m women race, 1500m and 3000m steeplechase. In some of these races, the best performing Kenyans missed out on the top 10 slots, a big miss in Kenya’s sports history.

Kenyans are used to their national anthem being played on the global stage, not this time round though. We must stand back and ask where the rain started beating us and use those lessons to improve our performance in the UK and beyond. We must also ask what our perennial rivals like Ethiopia and doing right and we are not.

There are a plethora of reasons why Kenyan athletes performed below par and the essence of this dismal display is to identify the pitfalls and offer tangible alternatives to avoid a recurrence of the same. Officials should also interrogate why some athletes experienced visa troubles, denying them sufficient time to acclimatise and prepare for their races.

Similarly, there were athletes who were left behind and who were deemed as bright medal prospects who would have redeemed the country’s image. There is a need to establish why they were dropped and whether such a move was warranted or not.

Irregular training of athletes has been cited as a problem afflicting the Kenyan team. This needs to be addressed for better future performance because unless pertinent issues are addressed, we should not rule out another appalling show by our sportsmen and women in Birmingham.

We need our beloved athletes to continue stamping their authority in both the continental and global arena. Let us establish what ails our athletics and find lasting solutions to guarantee future success.