Kiplimo upbeat

London.

Jacob Kiplimo’s shyness is what you would typically expect of a teenager. The soft-spoken 17-year-old, who finished ninth in Wednesday’s 5,000m heats to miss out on qualification, is however seeing the brighter side of his first appearance on the global senior stage.
“I picked up experience,” a calm Kiplimo told Daily Monitor at the team’s Gouman Hotel in central London yesterday. He did not offer any excuses about his performance and refused to blame the wet track.
“The weather was not good. But it did not make me run badly. In fact I did not feel it,” Kiplimo remarked.
He knows that he has opportunities coming his way next year in Australia (Commonwealth) and believes he will have matured come Tokyo 2020. Kiplimo’s 5,000m counter part Stephen Kissa clocked a time of 13:32.86 to finish 15th.
Unlike Kiplimo, Kissa felt the weather denied him a better performance. Uganda was shorn of its brightest hope in the 5,000m heats after Joshua Cheptegei pulled out with injury.
Meanwhile Ronald Musagala, who was due to compete in a 1,500m qualification race last night, urged authorities to hasten construction of athletics facilities to enable Ugandan athletes compete favourably with the world’s best runners.
Female 800m runner Halima Nakaayi also felt that there was more to be done for athletes to arrive for the Championships in peak condition, motivated and inspired.
“There are some small details that would enable us perform to the best of our abilities, but they were not adequately addressed,” Nakaayi added.