National Olympics Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) is pushing for early preparations for the Commonwealth Games set for July 28-August 8 2022 in Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

NOC-K -K Secretary General Francis Mutuku says there is more enthusiasm from team sports with some having already secured qualification as the national body eyes to send 150 athletes to the Games.

So far, Kenya has managed to get 113 slots due to good performance in the previous Commonwealth Games held in Gold Coast, Australia in 2018.

The women’s hockey team is the latest team to secure a slot after bagging a bronze medal during the Africa Cup of Nations in Accra, Ghana – the team will have 18 players in Birmingham.

They join the men’s rugby sevens team and basketball’s 3×3 men and women sides who have earned a place at the Games.

“We are already late and we need to start preparations for the Commonwealth Games where we need to make sure the participants bag more medals compared to the last edition. A task force is being set up and they will be able to come up with a budget that will help those preparing to start early enough because time is short,” said Mutuku.

Mutuku said a steering committee is expected to be formed in the next two weeks and be presented with a draft of a budget that will help affiliates prepare early enough for the games.

“We have a plan on how we want the athletes to train, we hope the steering committee will approve our budget to ensure our athletes more so those I  team sports hit camp from April, because we don’t have much time,” added Mutuku who was speaking during a session with the sports media at the Sports Journalist Association of Kenya Annual General Meeting in Naivasha, Nakuru County on Saturday.

Draft budget

Mutuku further stated that Kenya will have three villages during the games and NOC-K in collaboration with SJAK will advocate more personnel from various media houses to make sure all the sports events are covered.

 During the seminar SJAK President Chris Mbaisi said that the last two years has been a struggle for the sports journalists due to the cancellation of sporting events locally and across the globe.

“The last two years has been a challenge for sports journalists and some even lost jobs and could not put food on the table. We are happy things are opening up and sporting events are back” said Mbaisi.

He also challenged journalists on the need to concentrate on preparations to cover various upcoming events which include Africa Senior Championships in Mauritius, Olympic Games in Eugene, USA, Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK, World Under-20 Championships in Cali, Colombia among other events.

International Sports Press Association (AIPS) president Gianni Merlo who joined the meeting via zoom said that the Covid-19 pandemic created a lot of chaos with loss of jobs which led to lack of information reaching the right sources on time.

“We are ready to begin again and next year we shall be good to go though we need to study the situation because countries have different forms of restrictions and we need to come up with different solutions because in Italy many have been vaccinated up to three times which eases movements,” said Merlo.