Two athletes on an Iinternational Olympic Committee (IOC) development wing Olympic Solidarity scholarship in Kenya returned on Monday with news of being mistreated.
The athletes, middle-distance runner Chancy Master and long distance runner Lucia Chandamale described their training at Eldolate High Performance Training Centre as bitter-sweet.
The scholarship was awarded by Olympic Solidarity to prepare the two for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Master said they were offered the best training schedule at the centre owned by Kenyan athletics legend, Kip Keino but he said they mistreated by giving them miserable food and allowances.
“Training is good because they have good facilities but Keino is a difficult person,” Master said. “When we complained about the Kenyan food menu he could not help.
“The allowance was not enough, imagine we were receiving just K6,500 (50 US dollars) a month and he just raised it to US$100 (K13,000) last month following a complaint by the athletes from other countries camping at the centre.”
But he said it would be unfortunate that he would not return.
“I am not happy that I will not go back to finish my scholarship in Kenya because I was improving despite being mistreated,” he said.
Chandamale also said the training was useful but it was hard to live because the money was not enough.
“It’s hard to live in a foreign land with little money because we were failing to buy good variety of food especially when they prepared food that was not good enough for our liking,” Chandamale said.
Athletics Association of Malawi vice-president Godfrey Phiri said they were concerned with what the athletes were going through.
Phiri said the association recommended to Olympic and Commonwealth Games Association of Malawi (Ocgam) to consider withdrawing the athletes from Kenya for domestic camping.
“Although they have said the training is good for their career but looking at what they were going through we can’t let them finish the remaining year,” Phiri said.
“We have decided that they should not return after Christmas and New Year holidays because one of the conditions of the scholarship is that the athletes should be happy.”
He said it was unfair for the athletes to be denied their allowance when Olympic Solidarity released a monthly stipend of US$1,200 (K168,000) for each.
Former middle-distance athlete Francis Munthali and Germany-based athlete Catherine Chikwakwa also complained of being mistreated when they were training at the centre ahead of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
Ocgam also withdrew the athletes and organised a domestic training programme, a development, which did not go down well with former athletics coach from Kenya Elizabeth Olaba.
@ 2005 BNL Limited, Malawi
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