Agitos Foundation Athletics Course begins in Kenya

The development project focuses on athletics, the most practiced and successful individual sport in African countries.

The Agitos Foundation IPC Athletics Technical Course was opened at the MOI International Sports Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday (27 May) and will run until 7 June 2013.

The newly elected Cabinet Secretary of Sports, Culture and Arts, Hassan Wario, an advocate of elite athletics competitions in Kenya, was present at the Opening Ceremony.

The Athletics Technical Courses have been co-financed by UK Sport and aim to build the necessary capacities among coaches, national officials and national classifiers to systematically develop the sport and the athletes and decrease the discrepancy between the training conditions of athletes from different countries.

Sixty-five participants from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo will attend four different courses for visual impairment and physical impairment classification, coaching and officiating.

The development project focuses on athletics, the most practiced and successful individual sport in African countries.

The course aims to help to develop a new wave of athletes in East Africa and allow Kenya to gain the knowledge necessary to hold an international IPC Athletics competition.

Each NPC will receive at least one low cost racing wheelchair at the end of the coaching course. During the course the coaches will learn how to train athletes in wheelchair racing.

As follow-up the participating NPCs will be mentored and monitored in the implementation of the athlete performance pathway. Male and female athlete participation, training activities, the licensing of athletes and their participation in international competitions will provide a variety of platforms to measure the impact of the development programme and to constantly improve approaches and concepts.