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Lord Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, is in Kenya starting today on a semi-official visit-slash-holiday. Coe will address the media on a number of issues. No doubt, he will talk about doping and the $5 million dollar per year investment into fighting doping in the beleaguered country.

Coe has been to Kenya many times. As an athlete, the two-time Olympic gold medallist trained there, before it was commonplace to do so. He benefitted from the dirt roads, elevation, and climbs.

According to the Kenyan publication, “Nation,” during his end-of-year “State of the Nation” conference with African journalists last month, Coe said Kenya is a key player in athletics, highlighting the fact that Kenyan athletes helped shape his illustrious running career.

Coe most recently visited for the 2021 World U20 Championships as well as the U17 World Championships.

“My athletics career was in a large part shaped inspirationally and by its values through Kenyan athletics…” he said.

“Kip Keino was one of my heroes, I raced against Mike Boit, Ben Jipcho was a distance god… and I could go all the way until 2012 when David Rudisha grabbed the attention of the whole world and did something I didn’t think I would see in my lifetime as an athletics spectator (800 metres world record of 1:40.91).

“So I think it’s really important that Kenya deals with this issue (war against doping) because you are not just your average athletics nation.

“This is not some countries in the world where athletics is ‘a nice to have sport and we will work as hard as possible to promote it.’ This (athletics) is deep in your DNA. This is what you are passionate about and I think the right decision has been made to absolutely try to get to grips with this.

“The world needs clean Kenyan athletes that have the confidence of the rest of the world whenever they set foot on the track and on the roads,” said Coe.

Coe is also on holiday and is going to visit with his friend Jack Tuwei, the president of Athletics Kenya (AK).

He is expected to meet with other top AK and government officials and athletes.

Coe has made news throughout December including celebrating the World Athletics Athletes of the Year with Sidney McLaughlin and Armand “Mondo” Duplantis on Dec. 7 in Monaco.

He was also quoted recently to further debunk the 60-mile-per-week training myth. He said that he was running lots of miles (more than 100 miles per week) and lifting quite a bit of weight during his training.

A week later on Dec. 16, Coe presided over the Loroborough University graduation ceremony.

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