Kenya: Coach Kosgei Lands Job in Bahrain
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
May 10, 2006
Posted to the web May 9, 2006
Chris Mbaisi
Nairobi
Former Kenya national athletics coach Mike Kosgei has landed a job in Bahrain. Kosgei said he has been offered a job to coach the Bahrain national team.
He was due to leave for Bahrain yesterday evening to finalise negotiations.
“The deal is as good as sealed and I am just travelling to Bahrain to formalise everything,” he said in an interview before departure.
Kosgei said if things go according to plans, his first major assignment would be to prepare the Bahrain junior side for the World Junior championship scheduled for July in Beijing, China.
This, he said, would be followed by the preparation of the national side for the Asian Games scheduled for December in Doha, Qatar.
Bahrain is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Kenyan defectors and Kosgei will be very much at home with them.
His stable will feature close to 20 runners who have left their countries of birth for Bahrain over the last four years.
Former Moroccan Rashid Ramzi, Abel Yaqoot Jowher formerly Kenya’s Abel Cheruiyot, Mushir Salim Jowher (Leonard Mucheru) and Yusuf Saad Kamel (Gregory Konchella) are among the top athletes now running in Bahrain colours.
Others are Belal Mansoor (John Yego), Tareq Mubarak (Dennis Kipkurui) and Yasin Khaled Kamal (David Ndegwa).
Kosgei enjoyed an uninterrupted 10-year reign as Kenya’s head coach, which ended acrimoniously in 1995 after leading Kenya at the World Cross Country Championships in Durham, Ireland.
He had taken over from Germany’s Walter Abmyr in 1985.
Kosgei has had an outstanding record both locally and internationally.
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He led the successful Kenyan team to the Olympic games in Seoul, South Korea in 1988 and the World Championships in 1991,1993 and 2001.
Kosgei also coached in Finland where he trained Finnish junior athlete Ann Marie Sandell in Kenya in 1995, a move that saw the girl win junior gold in Durham.
He was also the pioneer coach of Kip Keino High Performance Training Centre in Eldoret, now fully funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and supplied by the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) technical personnel.