 Hope you are enjoying everything that the touchline is offering you, just from Musa Uchiyono on this foundation Kikooff to hope Kenya, on the way of giving back to society after playing for Kenya, for a very long time. Now we shift gears to athletics because it has been a very big week for athletics in the country and also internationally, hawa mahali para mahali, mahali kwa mahali wada. Kذika, entrepreneurs hila watakwenya na koro yos a congressa hivesi wa mahali hacedo. Kwa isa milinga risu kama mwunga la mwunga? Geni, kwa mahali uga ni siye hati, kwa mahali kwa mwunga lakwenya lakwai kenyia kama mwunga, crackedima and sportjanaist Master Mutwiri Mutwisa. Katia mwunga za NZ2008, Afrikaappedz and also digital content editor at Sportfesa. Kupani, Kawini, Karebu, Sana 2, Wai 2, Kwae 4, Forem mii mwimisha rahita heMarki kama kumisha nisa lulu kuchu mii mwenia kwenina ki mpa wusha nawe kwenisha aini kumisa dahi kuva kutiyiko kufa kuya mwa kusti hisha lulu kutya kwa kutiyiko kutya uro kwa kuja kutya kakunia kwa huna kuja IWF, Kasta, and the South Africa itself because the nation of South Africa fell behind the athlete. At some point she was ordered to take the kind of hormonal treatment now she has been ordered to do now in order to run 800 meters. But the ruling was challenged. So IWF and the Sebastian Co came up with these new rules where they tried to define exactly what are the ratio for somebody completing as a female athlete. And those gender hormonal thresholds to reduce them you have now to take drugs so that you can fill within that threshold in an attempt to level the field. And when the caste ruling came out earlier this week they said yes these rules are discriminatory but they are needed to level the brain field. So if you ask me this whole Kasta Semenya affair it has been one way of the IWF they have been trying to get rid of this problem for over a decade. Because fundamentally she did nothing wrong. She's not the one who entered herself in any race. She was entered first of all by her nation in 2009 at the African Youth Championships. They went on to enter her again into the world championships and since then she has been competing entered by her federation. So in all this affair it's a very sad affair because what IWF is trying to do now is to show us that you can apply the rules based on what is fitting at that particular point in time. For example you are saying that we cannot dope our athletes. We know we have a big problem with doping in this country. But then again you are saying it's a motherly it's allowed to take medicine or to take drugs so that they can reduce their hormones. So it's a very grey area but IWF has not covered itself in glory. Because now the question comes is what kind of president that IWF has set. Because now you are saying that you can take drugs to reduce your hormonal advantage. You can also not take drugs because you are a clean athlete. So what kind of president has this set for the future in athletics? The future of athletics now has gone into a grey area because there's an Indian athlete also who challenge those rules. And cast rule in her favor but she is a sprinter. It means that castor can run between 200 and 400 meters, skip 800 meters and 15 meters and compete from 5000 going above. So what are we trying to do here? Are we targeting her specifically because she is so good in these two distances. She won the Commonwealth gold medals last year at both distances 115. Very likely she was going to double in Doha in September and on the strength of everything she would still dominate the two distances. So what are we trying to say here? These rules have been applied selectively if you ask me. Because if you look at it she has fundamentally done nothing wrong. All she does she wants to do is to compete. But there has been other people who feel like she has an advantage that should be addressed. But this thing should have been addressed from 2009. When the problem came when it was first noticed in Mauritius during the Africa juniors they would have said okay guys please don't enter this athlete. Let us figure out how to deal with these cases. And then we can come back. But she ran in Berlin N1. Meeting Janeth Jebkowsky and Jenny Midos. I want Janeth Jebkowsky was the world champion then. And Jenny Midos from Britain. I was at that press conference after that race. The 2009 Berlin world championship. And the press conference was crazy. Generally thought of the world were asking. They were doubting her agenda first of all. And secondly whether it was unfair. And at that time the person who sat in the city of Semenu would have been sitting was the former EWF Secretary General. And he could not answer these questions. So it is one problem. But I don't think they have cleared the problem. What they have opened up is they have opened up delivery for other people to challenge whatever the set of rules that you are putting up. Because one thing that now the rules apply to 400 meters, 400 meters hurdles, 800 meters and 1500 meters to the one mile. Now what will be the difference when she goes to the 5000 meters? Because now you realize that if she is running the shorter races it's more about her muscle and the strength. But for the 5000 meters, 10,000 meters endurance comes into play. So what kind of technicalities will be looking at when she goes on for these higher races? The technicalities here are very simple. When she won Doha yesterday 800 meters she did a 155. Which is a very good time considering we are still in May. If you put it into perspective it means she said yesterday she was asked are you going to take the hormonal drugs and her answer is very emphatic. Hell no. So it means that for her to defend her title in Doha she has to start a medication when is the next week. And if she hasn't taken that medication it means she is free to run between 100 meters and 400 meters as you stated. And she is free also to compete in anything from 5000 to the marathon. So what we have opened here is a technicality where what is going to happen. If she competes after taking the medication that she was forced to do for 2 years between when she won the Olympics in London and between she became the world title Semenya was not in the top bracket of her sport but now she came back very strongly to win the world title to win another Olympics title to win two common other titles. So what the future holds is right now we cannot say we know. We just have to wait to see what reaction she has said she is not going to take the medicine. So is she going to compete in any other diamond league meeting in 800 meters or 1500 meters or does that mean it is the end of her career. Because that is one option. She tweeted some time last night about something cryptical about her considering quitting the sport. That is one option. She can actually quit the sport and decide to put an end to this matter or let's see whether she is going to step up the distance whether she can train to compete in the oberis of this hall in 5000 meters. Now the thing is the options that they are giving her to go and take into the marathon in other disciplines that they are giving her between 400 and the mile but also they are giving her an option to run with a male candidate. How will that come out to be like? Because can they prove also that the male at the level with which kastasemenias are? They can't prove it. And if you put your question into perspective or look at it in another way would she be allowed to take drugs to maybe laisak or hormonal levels to compete with the best males of this world? So that's what I'm saying. It opens a very, very grey area in the sport because now we have seen at least who are permitted to take drugs to cure a certain condition that they were born with but we are prohibiting drugs to enhance performance. So if some kastasemenia today decides to enter the 800 meters and compete with Akina Rudisha and Akina Fagasono teaches of this world and the Imano Koril will she now apply to take some drugs to enhance because her levels are considered not eligible to compete as a female in certain distances not compete as a female per se but in certain distances. So the same ratio does not fit if she decides today let me take on Akina David Rudisha. The 800 meters. So it is quite a decision that to be honest to me it doesn't make any sense. It is fundamentally wrong although it has been taken by the highest court in the sports and it is not practicable because it seems it's targeting one athlete and that is kastasemenia. Can she win the appeal? What might happen in that appeal? Well I think the court of application for sport is the very last option for her because when the IWF moved this through the IWF appeals board they referred the matter to the CAS so after the CAS now it means we have drawn a line under that matter but the questions still remain. So it is going to be very interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks and months if she decides to quit the sport or whether she decides to step up but one thing we know according to what she said last night is that she is not going to take any treatment meaning she can't be eligible to defend her title in Doha. Now let's move away from kastasemenia a little bit and talk about IWF and the sports and actually targeting African athletes. I might be wrong but I think there was a time when it came out that the Diamond League also and IWF wanted to scrap off the 5,000 meters and the 10,000 meters because these are events that are majorly dominated by Africans and more so Kenyans, Ethiopians. Is this something that is now coming out and to open that these are clandestine meetings which they are having to target African athletes? Well, former Olympic champion and world record meter, Italian meter record holder Sebastian Kovan he took over IWF in 2016 he had four pillars of reform one was the anti-doping and dealing with issues like semenia the other one was to make the sport appeal more to a younger audience because they were struggling to sell events they also struggling to attract the so called the young audience right now that we have the one that is so savvy on technology and social media and stuff the other pillar was integrating the sport and financial management and therefore was trying to model the sport to make it more exciting to a wider audience so one of the things we have to know is that since then the measures coming from Monaco since landed again is to what Africans are good at so what are we good at distance races on the track right? or let's say midro to long distance where there is no more competition from the Europeans and from the Asians to understand this more the sport of athletics there are three regions in the world that drive it commercially one is the Americans the second is Europe and then we have the Asia and a bit of Oceania so as Africans we provide talent to the athletics table but we don't provide the resources so that is why you see all these steps are coming from Monaco there seems slanted agnist events that Africans participating after some outcry except even from the people who have done so well in the sport people like Heile people like Elio people like you name them from Africa Isham Elgeruj and all that they said wiping out distance races from the track is detrimental in two ways one you are killing the whole idea of progression in athletics most people they should progress through the distances from 800, 1500, 5000, 10,000 to the marathon and that is why Elio is doing so well if you want to know why is because he started his career at 1500 he went to the 5000 he did a few 10,000 races to the half marathon to where he is right now you notice those athletes who go straight to the roads they are very young they do not stay for too many years you see somebody is around for 2-3 good years then that's it so there is that natural progression you are killing it secondly you are trying to punish athletes for excellence because Kenyans and Ethiopians win almost all the time in the 5000 10,000 meter races you are punishing them for being good at doing something yet you never punish the Jamaicans and Americans for being good in the sprints except when there was Mofara and Mofara was winning everything we never had these things of finishing the 5000 and 10,000 in the diamond league in fact they were even having events to add the 5000 and 10,000 for more to come and running and we are now here in him also saying he refused a chance to run for Britain in the marathon he also came back to the 10,000 meters after some protest IWF clarified because they did not say we are bound to pressure they said we have cried if I didn't say that we are going to have these races continuing but we are not going to see them on TV which again this is another question if I am running because I have a shoe contractor have a kit contractor watch contract and all that and I am not being seen on TV then why am I going to run if the only thing I am going to run for is the prize money which if you ask people who do this sport they tell you the prize money is not that much they make money from so we can say that loosely IWF they are making they are putting policies and measures that seem to be choking the African sport wow satafon let's move away from most of the negative parts and come back home here where we are dominating yesterday you were watching there the diamond league that is happening in Daw and one event that we dominated was the 1500 meters man how good were we in that race all the 7 of Kenyans went on to win it it is a very good thing that if you look at the 1500 meters the world title it has been held by a Kenyan since 2011 it has not left this country since 2011 as well as it is 2011 13 and 15 Manangwe took over in 15 one thing about Kenyan athletics over the years what I have noticed is that there is always something we call the copycat effect where if we are doing very well in a discipline you will find so many good runners in that discipline because the beauty about our athletics is whenever somebody wins they inspire a whole generation they inspire a whole for example 800 meters was dead since Birikonchela since the days of Birikonchela until Rudisha came now from Rudisha we have seen a few good 800 meters come Birikonchela, Saruni, Rotich so there is hope in 800 meters as we started doing well in 1500 meters you can see now we have said a very good deep of talent including George Manangwe's brother the two brothers he finished 7th the brother finished first so we can see we have good hope in that and when you look at even the women's reason the minute Birikonchela started beating the Ethiopians we now saw people like Fateshengia teach so this guy the beauty about our athletics is that there is that pooling of talent if we see good Maradona somebody says the records when you look at people started opening the Maradona from tears for Kenyans now we have there you keep jogging you have so many good Maradona runners around so it's one thing that shows that as long as these guys are winning they will always attract new talent to those disciplines and that is what you can see in Doha apart from Obiru you had Birikonchela you had so many other good people in midu to long track distances so the outlook for Doha if this translates to September if Obiru can do an 825 right now and it's very early in May if Manangwe can do an 132 in May it means that by the time it gets to the world championships you are expecting people like Manangwe to be in the region of 337 people like Obiru will be somewhere will be somewhere very near to close to the world record or to the championship record so the start is positive and you can only hope for better Major Ramos is killing us in 800 meters it is his time now that Rudisha is not racing well, Major Ramos is the second fastest run in history of course behind Rudisha in that final of 2012 London if we look at it this way Imanokori is a very good athlete but he is still evolving he needs to know how to win races because what Ramos has perfected over the years is how to win races of course when Rudisha was around he was always trying to look for the second for second until when he beat him in the Kono Manodin 2014 but what we need to do is that 800 meters run we have very good talent not even Korean himself we even have people like Saruni Fagason is still around Bette is still there so what they need to do is to learn how to plan the races tactically because 800 is one of the most technical races in athletics because it is very short yet very long there is no time to plan tactics if you get it wrong once because you don't have time to recover maybe in 1500 you can run from the back and catch people on the homestretch and so on and so forth so what we need to do is that our runners need to sit down and analyze races there is one thing Rudisha always kept telling me look and know your distance know your race know what is 800 meters how many splits do you have you have 200 meters, 400 meters, 600 meters then 800 meters train and plan how to run across all of them but this is a field that is open apart from almost we have people from Ethiopia we have guys from Morocco we have guys from ... 800 meters 800 meters is like a school you need to sit in wrap conditions and analyze how am I going to run this and maybe that's what Korean needs to work on because we know he has the talent he has the speed he just needs to work on the tactics and know when you want to bite Niger what do you do do you get out very fast or do you close in very fast so depending on how you analyze and analyzing the split times and I think but I know that we can push him right now he looks like he's on top but he's one guy I know that we can beat wow big conversation there when it comes to athletics where Muthiru Muthuota very good athletics journalist here in Kenya but also the greatest marathoner in the world Heliwood Kipchoga we have seen him race by race and up to where he is at the moment will there be anyone come closer to where Heliwood Kipchoga is right now in the current generation I don't think so the only thing is that Heliwood has done for the marathon sport first of all he picked up from where Wanjilo left somewhere he was the first athlete to change the course of marathon running because before Wanjilo happened especially that race in Beijing 2008 I would advise people if you have not watched just go to YouTube and look for it the rules of the marathon start conservatively then finish strongly because the distance is too big for you to attack from the off but in 2008 Wanjilo changed the rules of marathon running he proved that with the training you can actually run quickly for 42 kilometers .195 for example in London with the two Ethiopians in the 40th kilometer Heliwood did the 40th kilometer in 4 minutes and 26 seconds for somebody who has run for 39 kilometers to then again cover the 40th kilometer in 4 minutes and 26 seconds that was absolutely insane that was madness so the thing is Wanjilo and now Heliwood Heliwood has shown that there is no limit to the human abilities and even when he ran in Monza 2 hours 0025 in that formula and track he said there is no limit to the what a human can do his analysis is going back to Berlin to try and run a faster time than what he ran and few doubt against it is because like he told me sometime back he has become a good student of the marathon analyze what he did what he did last time when he went wrong and work on it on training because there is nothing that is actually one on race day everything is one on training those three months that you train for a marathon that is where everything is done for example if it is the workouts for example he ran 2 that is 7 that is 8 in London if he was to go back and break the course record in 2020 he will go through all the splits and go back to training and see here do I push myself a bit do I increase so I think what Elioda has done to the marathon world is to leave a template for anyone else who wants to follow has to work in sometime back Haile and Terigat were considered the great marathoners of their time they were asked whether running beyond 2 hours was possible and I remember Haile said it is impossible to be in sanity but the way Elioda is doing it it's very possible maybe he might not be the one to achieve it but someone can but he has left a template for people to sit down and study because everything in sport there is a lot of science it's not just waking up and deciding I want to run you must train yourself you must know your body you must fit your body to the conditions you must know the conditions of where you are running the weather conditions must be right because you can see what happened to him in Bialinos it in 2016 I think when the insor of the shoe came out he was on course to run a record but such things so every variable must be right and you do the right timing and you know that you are not just running against the clock there are also other runners who are very good and big champions also so you have to beat a very good field you have to be at the best of your conditions and the conditions themselves from your shoe to everything must be right but I believe that wherever LUD is right now he is untouchable but I think the biggest thing he has contributed to the sport is he has now given us a manual to run the marathon big one there for LUD lastly our team is going to the Yokohama Japan world relays which gold medals will you be expecting will we improve from our performance or from the Bahamas I think when it comes to the little team we have not yet found a good team that is capable of winning let's say the best performer was about the first edition when we won three good medals I think the second edition we did not fare very well I think we have not yet grabbed the concept of this really or there is some because it is happening too very early in the outdoor season and most of our athletes are conditioned to look for medals in the world championship because that is where they know if you are a world champion for the next two years you will get good appearance fees and all that so I think that you have not entirely embraced the concept of the relays but the team but you cannot put anything away from the Kenyan team so I think maybe we will can expect at most one or two gold medals I can not let you go without talking about your favourites English Premier League team how you feel how you feel your team is so far with the new coach and everything as you know the season has a mixed bag has been a mixed bag but to be honest even the most optimistic as an old fund did not expect they would be in this position at this particular point in the season which position are you talking about we are talking about with one foot in the finals of the Europa League last season at a time like this it was all over when Atletico came and beat them one nil at the Emirates and also in a position to challenge for the top four of course losing nine points was not ideal from a good position but with two games to go they are still in it with Chelsea, Manchester United and Tottenham as well so if you would have asked any optimistic as an old fund we will be here at this particular point of the season they also would have been unknown because for the last four seasons and Asen Wenga the club was in decline there were very few players of quality you can compare with the Asen old team that was beating everyone so at this point Una has done very well we are just hoping that when it comes to the close season Mr. Kronka will open his pastings and will fortify their sides because we cannot understand why people like Mustafa call themselves professional footballers people like we also have Mavropos and so many other defenders yes they are good players we are not refusing but they are not the class of the kind of a team that Asen old could be expecting at Maninator at the moment you find that the club has got players who are good but not the class of the team that was there before as we see Manchester City and Liverpool and Tottenham to some extent are running away with it so we can say that it's not been it's not been good it's not been bad for Asen old whatever we can get now we can take it if it's top 4 or 5 if it's the Europa League trophy but you love the consistency in that now the team is growing step by step consistency has been a problem because they had gone there's a time they went to 22 games and beaten then they started losing games right now they had a very good home record I think winning the last 10 but the last 3 have not come out to be like that Christo Paris came and shocked them so they have still not yet become a consistency like what we can see from Liverpool Man City and Tottenham like even when you have a blip it's not for so long because losing 3 games in a row if you add 9 points to their talent today they will be up in that so those are what you are talking about so there is this likelihood they can take their chance and there is this likelihood also they can miss it all so that's what I'm saying it's been a mixed season who do you predict to win the Champions League? at this moment you don't see an outside Barcelona because for one thing they have been there before of the remaining clubs Liverpool lost the final last year the last time the Liverpool one was in 2005 and most of those players have moved on they have since moved on from the team so sometimes it's all about the experience being there and knowing Barcelona they were there I think 3 years ago with most of the count and squad they were there with the message of these old booskets we have people like what is this in Suarez others guys were there so they know when it comes what to do at the business end of the season I ask it's been what 20 what years since the last since 1995 there's a last time they got 96 in 96 that's when they have been reaching in a position to reach the final Tottenham I've never gone this far so we can say that among them Barcelona have the know-how how to win this trophy and sometimes that's what makes the difference because talent wise you can't get to the semifinal if your team is not talented they have beaten very good teams along the way we have Man City, Rout eventas Bayan Munich they have actually not lost any much so we can see that at the start of the season Messi told and he rarely speaks but he told the crowd at Kampunu this is only going to get this so there is that also single focus single minded focus amongst a group of players that leads them to the trophy but then again this is football crazy things have happened but if you ask me the money is on Barcelona well thanks a lot Mutuiru Mutuota really appreciate having you here to talk to us on all matters athletics that is Mutuiru Mutuota the digital content editor at Sport Pesa that's it for us here on this interview when we come back for now we'll be looking at an nostalgic feel of Eliud Kipchoke and all the marathon he has run in because he has run in 13 marathons and he has won 12 of them only losing one marathon how good is Eliud Kipchoke plus some other highlights from the UFA Champions League and the Europa League when we come back we'll be talking all matters fan zone