The third Athletics Kenya weekend meeting initially set for Ruring’u Stadium on March 10 has been moved to Thika Stadium.
Athletics Kenya Central region's first vice chairman Erastus Kabugi said the change in venue was arrived at after establishing that Ruring’u Stadium is still unfit for competitive athletics.
“Ruring’u Stadium is not yet ready to host this meeting. We talked to the contractor who informed us that there are areas that need to be worked on before it is ready for use. He informed us that there have been issues with payment and works have since stalled,” said Kabugi.
“We also talked to the Nyeri County government about the same and were informed that the stadium is still under the national government.”
Kabugi said Thika is a perfect alternative, on which they expect to stage a successful event.
“We have held our events at Thika before and we feel we could still manage to pull off a great championship,” added Kabugi.
“We (AK Central) are going to have a meeting with the various stakeholders on Friday to seal all the loopholes.”
He said medical and security (Police) service providers have been alerted about the event.
Kabugi said the three events held so far — Mumias, Kisumu and Nairobi — attracted a significant number of athletes and they don’t expect anything less.
“I was at the Nyayo Stadium during the Nairobi leg of the series, where I talked to a number of stakeholders who expressed interest in sending their athletes to our event,” said Kabugi.
“We expect a lot of people to show up for this event even though ours is a murram track.”
“We are going to have all the events, save for high jump and pole vault, since we don’t have facilities for such. We also don’t expect as fast times as we had in Nairobi over the weekend.”