We have the roller skating team and i joined them right now as uh they come to ntv a successful outing you people had as well caribou on ntv My name is and i’m a professional speed skater my name is tyrone joe and i’m a professional speed skater my name is jeff mungai a professional speed skater my name is ishmael mani i’m a professional juniors kid my name is keith offula and i’m the freestyle patron i’m the coach You got your side very well because we see a lot of medals from the side just perhaps briefly those who have the medals our watch on benny medelli gangnam pattern basically there’s the road races and the truck races now this silver is there for the truck races a thousand meters number two
And then the bronze is for the road races uh one lap circuit number three all right i participated in the long distance races and in the truckless i was able to win the gold medal and in the other two road races i was able to win the bronze medals how was the challenge
It was pretty difficult mostly on the road races okay i participated in the short races i got it on the 100 meter race this one i got it in one lap circuit one lap circuit yeah all right okay i participated both on the track and the road races
On the truck races i managed to become number two in the 500 meters um position 1 in the 200 meters position three in the ten thousand ten kilometer wrist on the road race and um position two again in the 100 meters sprint and position one in
The one lap circuit is of the hubble yeah uh it was very difficult so since we had to go through the hits quarter finals semi-finals up to the finals it was quite difficult but we thank god that we managed to where’s your we’re happy if i can talk to the tm the journey
Wasn’t quite something rosie because 16 hours of travel as well as football as well also went through that but then it was a 16 hour journey as well through drc through uganda coming back and going what was the how was it we actually did about 32 hours of travel
Because there was an entire night travel to kampala and tebe and people would wonder why do you need to travel to kinshasa but for some reason end up going to entebbe why because all these athletes the fourth leader traveled was self-sponsored so in a bid to cut costs we had to find the
Cheapest flight available okay and the cheapest flight available was in table to kinshasa so we got 12 hours to enter waited for a flight and table back to nairobi which is home had a layover for about 12 hours then got on a flight again back to kinshasa and we had a very long
Stay in congo brazoville which meant that we actually got to kinship at about 4 a.m in the morning and these guys were on the track two hours later so this achievement is something funding was an issue perhaps do you guys talk to the ministry and what information did they give you
We did seek funding from the government and this time around we were told that our application was late however even in prior competitions when we’ve requested funding on time we funding has not been forthcoming because we’re told the budget is is limited or funds are unavailable so it’s been
Any number of things for the last three four years like these boys have been training throughout we have a team of around 22. both girls both women ladies and men they all of them went to the qualifiers on 6th october and they qualified so we had them assured that they will travel
Unfortunately when the government told us they couldn’t sponsor us we had to look for funding elsewhere those who are able to raise the tickets for themselves are the ones who are able to travel so we posted online social media in every to get funds we had a name chang account
And this managed to get so they were practicing regardless of whatever hurdles they were facing so they still continued practicing and it was shown with whatever results they had so we still continued our training we continue we continued eating the food we were supposed to we continued praying we
Continued seeking for funding and they managed to go all right what was your motivation going into this specia hakuna la kingdom got a fruit delicious what was the motivation behind it kept on training as you wait to see if you can make it to the championship okay
The first thing that came to our mind was we have so many difficulties right and how we respond to these difficulties you know determine who we are right so we continued our training despite all these challenges we kept each other in check we had meetings together we played together we
Basically spent time with each other encouraged each other and by the moment we got there we had our head focused on what you what is going to what you’re going to face out there yeah is the medal of zona shanina commercial okay what i believe about what i believe about my life is
Everything you have to conquer right everything you set your mind to you have to conquer it and um these medals most probably the gold the gold medals when i go out there i need to become the best right so for you to be the best you
Need to work for it and mini con kieran and econo gold medal namaste i’ve worked for it and have earned what i’ve worked through upon mba cinema these medals mean a lot shows that my hard work didn’t go in vain and practice makes perfect for these medals showed the hard work that
I’ve been putting on since i started skating and learn to get more and more mind more yes for me these medals are skating for me it’s not about just kidding it’s uh skating with a course like me in school um the role model to others because
I’m able to balance both school work and sports yes where do you go to school um i go to school in a guru langalanga secondary school nangalanga yeah all right just briefly maybe the two of you just answered the question that where are we in terms of roller skating the first
Time i covered roller skating was in 2013 at casserolini stadium when you were preparing for a championship with it was a danger some guy denzel who later fell ill and how how was the journey and where are we in terms of roller skating maybe to talk a little bit about roller skating
We have various disciplines and with the disciplines we have right now each discipline is advancing at its own pace we have the speed skaters like the ones here they have their i would say they have their own way of training and looking for funds and all that
There is the freestyle skating which i i represent for us we are a little bit not so much advanced like they are but as you can see the fact that we’re here means we are working it’s it’s a daily process we have the royal ball who are out in india chennai
For the world cup so each discipline is growing at its own pace and we are hoping even for us as freestylers we are hoping to pick up sometime soon and maybe make progress and reach the award levels that we aspire for all right as a team manager
We have the team that is in china for the world championship as well how different is it building a team from different categories and also just to try and those who want to join roller skating where can they look uh for you guys basically skating is actually one of the
Sports in kenya which has basically has a kind of structure that you want to see for any sport because basically all these athletes belong to different clubs in their own hometowns so you have athletes at the club level and then once you have them at the club
Level and these clubs are in all the 47 counties of kenya once you have the club level now when we do qualifiers for the national team different clubs will sponsor the best of the athletes to the qualifiers and then from those qualifiers now you will get the national team
However like every other spot you basically face the same kind of challenges we will have challenges with funding we’ll have issues with with equipment in fact it has been our prayer the things like v80 and import duty should be scratched off sports uh equipment making it a little bit more
Affordable and after all we’re looking for a healthy nation if we can get every other person to exercise because this is a form of exercise if you can get every person to exercise we’ll be healthier keep choking just came from saying it where can i get you if i want to join
Roller skating if you’re in nairobi you probably have access to about probably even 10 different clubs so that will be dependent on where you live examples of the clubs that we have you have new horizons you have new horizon is based off gateway mall you have sprint skating which nairobi
Does it at aga khan walk nakuru where he is from they do it outside the standard chartered bank every sunday um you do have uh freestyle yes um so they’re various clubs you just need to sit down even google it or ask someone we have groups even online on whatsapp
Just look for us and you’ll find us all right you all got to know to configuration we have a federation for roller skating a federation was registered a few years back but i think you also understand that the sports act gave conditions in which every federation is supposed to
Adhere to unfortunately you saw the list that was in the newspaper that it was in the daily nation and unfortunately our federation was not among the 16. so we are looking for ways and means to ensure that we comply yes we’re looking for that all right
Just a few of your tricks as we move those who can roller skates while at wesley cc all right show us one or two of your tricks that you have let me have that move back move back it’s tricks from freestyle skating i’ve done what we call a tall hill spin
And a few uh a few of our some other moves yeah each move has a name okay and each name has a number of marks awarded for that move all right okay someone else all right you see it starts when you’re young right [Laughter] thank you so much for this and indeed uh
Congratulations to the medals that you have safari we will have many more of them this week and then see you next week for much more spots on top bye
source
