NAIROBI, July 28 (Xinhua) — Workforce Kenya total captain, Eunice Jepkoech Sum, has backed the category of Tokyo 2020 to surpass their report medal tally from Rio 2016, the place they received 13 medals (six gold, six silver and a bronze).
Sum, who was talking from Japan after a lightweight coaching session, urged her compatriots to be affected person after Kenyans took to social media to lament the poor outcomes thus far.
The East African nation that topped the African medal charts in Brazil is but to medal at Tokyo 2020, with the nation’s 4 boxers and males’s rugby crew bowing out of the rostrum race on the preliminary hurdle.
The ladies’s volleyball facet opened their marketing campaign with successive 3-0 defeats to host Japan and South Korea, whereas Kenya’s ladies’s seashore volleyball duo misplaced 2-0 to Brazil.
All indication is as soon as once more the East Africans will depend on their celebrated observe and subject crew to be their supply of medals from Japan.
Boxing stays the one different sport to supply a medal for the nation on the Olympics however the final from the ring got here on the Seoul 1988 Video games in South Korea.
Kenyans took to social media of their droves on Tuesday and the early hours of Wednesday to slam the efficiency.
They expressed their dissatisfaction beneath the trending official hashtag #TeamKenya following the elimination of the boys’s sevens crew and the autumn of the boxers within the preliminaries.
“My want is to see Workforce Kenya carry out significantly better than the opposite Olympics. It is going to be my best achievement to go residence with extra medals than the earlier ones,” Sum, 33, mentioned on Wednesday.
The Moscow 2013 ladies 800m world champion who adopted it up with bronze on the Beijing 2015 Worlds in China, took over as the general captain for Workforce Kenya when Olympics Javelin silver winner, Julius Yego, stepped down from the function on July 5.
She made her Olympics debut at London 2012, competing in 1500m however her curiosity ended with a first-round exit through the heats.
On her return to the Summer season Video games in Rio 4 years later, Sum had dropped down the two-lap distance that was an ideal match for her working, however her race ended within the semifinals of the ladies’s 800m.
By then, Sum had established herself as a power within the ladies’s 800m, successful the 2014 Commonwealth and African double in following up her first world title in Russia the yr earlier than.
She was a part of the observe and subject contingent that arrived in Japan on Monday, with the eager English Premier League Chelsea FC fan searching for to exit on a excessive at her final Olympics.
“The climate right here is sweet, and it’s not an excessive amount of (a hassle). We’ve got been to earlier occasions like this (scorching situations) just like the earlier World Championship,” she remarked on the baking situations in Japan.
After three seasons of underwhelming performances, Sum labored herself again to the sort of kind that made her a dominant power on the distance between 2013 and 2015.
Nonetheless, she missed out on a medal on the Doha 2019 World Championship the place she completed fifth.
Sum was unable to hold the momentum into 2020 when the Olympics and different main world races had been canceled because of the pandemic.
The skilled athlete is, nevertheless, now adjusting to the brand new regular of performing in empty stadiums at her third and closing Olympics.
“I do know we’ve been used to crowds cheering us, however we’ve to comply with what’s the process now as a result of we perceive there’s a pandemic. Extra folks can be cheering us even on the streets,” the 1:56.99 lifetime greatest runner within the 800m who will take step one on the Tokyo 2020 observe in Friday’s heats added.
In acknowledging that she won’t be among the many favorites regardless of the pedigree that she brings to the Olympics, Sum maintained her major goal was to succeed in Tuesday’s ladies’s 800m closing.
Her predominant goal having been given the duty of captaining the crew is to guide the squad to outshine Rio 2016 and he or she is backing the category of Tokyo 2020 to do exactly that.
“We’re in a superb place. I’ve seen the coaching we’ve been doing, I believe we’re as much as the duty and I believe we will carry out higher than the earlier Olympics,” Sum added.
Kenya really received extra medals on the Beijing 2008 Olympics in China, 16, (six gold, 4 silver, six bronze) than Rio though the “weight” of the medals in Brazil (six silver to 4) ranks the latter as a report efficiency.