After a poor show by Central region during the national Under-20 trials, some coaches from the area have decided to approach future competitions differently.

Only one athlete from the region made it to the 30-member team heading to Cali, Colombia for the World U-20 championships that will run from August 1-6.

Samuel Kibathi who won the 5000m in the U-20 trials had only arrived a week earlier from Japan where he is based. 

The coaches from Nyandarua met in Nyahururu Friday and agreed that the County will be holding monthly “competitions” to keep regular track of the runners’ shape.Prior to the U-20 national trials, Athletics Kenya had facilitated regions to have training camps for selected athletes in that age group. Central had two such camps, one in Ndundori in Nyandarua and another in Thika, Kiambu each holding 40 runners. Central region is the only area that did not hold own trials to pick team to the U-20 national trials from the 80 athletes in the camps.

Instead the region handpicked about 30 athletes with majority coming from the camp in Ndundori, Nyandarua.

“It was shameful to see the runners we took to Nairobi being overlapped in the U-20 national trials.

“The mistake we made was failure to hold trials and we picked athletes without knowing their shape,” said the Nyandarua AK chairman Francis Kamau Mwaniki after holding a meeting of coaches based in Nyahururu to review the area’s performance in the ended track and field season.