Kenya’s mixed relay team takes World Athletics qualification ticket search to Germany
By Joel Sang, July 28, 2023In a bid to improve their ranking and qualify for the World Athletics Championship, Kenya’s mixed relay team will compete at the True Athletes Classics Meeting on Saturday, July 29, 2023.
The Athletics Championships are scheduled to take place on August 19–27 in Budapest, Hungary, and the relay team, currently ranked 16th in the World Athletics list, must improve on their current time of 3:14.64 to get a chance to participate.
The squad will hope to be inspired by Commonwealth Games champion Mary Moraa and Trans-Mara-born star Wycliffe Kinyamal, also a Commonwealth Games gold winner. Naomi Korir and National Champion Boniface Mweresa are also in the squad.
Moraa led Kenya A team during the national trials at Nyayo Stadium in June and managed to post a national record and a World Championship qualifying position in the 4x400m mixed relay race. Kinyamal, Zablon Ekwam, and Mercy Oketch were members of that team.
Record broken
The time posted, 3:14.64, meant the previous record of 3:16:21 registered in the previous year was broken. Jared Momanyi, Collins Kipruto, and Hellen Syombua were the other members of the 2021 team.
In the True Athletes Classics Meeting on Saturday, Moraa‘s led team will be looking to improve their 3:14.64 time and significantly boost their chances of making it to the Budapest Championship.
The Dominican Republic, Netherlands, USA, Poland, Jamaica, Nigeria, Italy, and Ireland are the other mixed relay teams.
For other teams to qualify, they have to be among the top-ranked nations at the end of the qualification journey in order to fill the eight remaining places according to the best performances in the whole qualifying period.
The top 16 ranked teams in the world at the end of the month will automatically get tickets to the World Athletics Championship, and Kenya have high hopes they will manage to make the famed list.