Uganda completed her campaign at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games with a rather disappointing performance in the men’s marathon.
Flag bearer Stephen Kiprotich did not finish (DNF) the marathon while compatriots Fred Musobo and Felix Chemongesi ran the entire 42.195 kilometres.
The London 2012 Olympic marathon gold medalist dropped out after running about 13km. By that time, he had been off the pace from the leading park. Kiprotich crossed the 5km mark in 15:22 just five seconds behind the leaders but he was a further forty-one seconds by the 10km mark. Kiprotich was unable to make it past 15km of the total distance in the marathon.
Fred Musobo came across the finish line in 44th place clocking 2:18:39 while Felix Chemongesi was the 51st finisher in 2:20:53 for Team Uganda.
Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge won the gold medal within 2:08:38 which was 1:20 ahead of Dutchman Abdi Nageeye and Belgian Bashir Abdi for silver and bronze respectively.
The current world champion and world record holder obliterated the entire field on his way to cement his name among the greatest athletes of all time. He becomes only the third man in history to defend the Olympic marathon gold.
Uganda thus leaves Tokyo with a tally of 4 medals – 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze which is the most successful campaign the country has ever had at the Summer Olympic Games.
It is a shame that the writer is a sports person. It is always an honuor and extremely difficult to make it to the olympics. By virtue qualifying to compete is already a great achievement. Being able to complete a marathon at that level is a greater achievement. Winning a medal would be the greatest achievement. The lack of facilities, funding, feeding, e.t.c before hand but in-spite of all this they athletes make it to the olympics. But to write that “Uganda completed her campaign at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games with a rather disappointing performance in the men’s marathon” shows that our sports writers need educating or better still need to understand the intricacies of what they are reporting about before belting out such liners.
Furthermore looking at more accomplished sports writers from other countries who report positively could also help improve our midocracy.
Glory and Honer all goes to God ,
Because I was not there ability to that Victi but it God helped them.