Nakaayi endorses Namboole track works

As she visited Mandela Stadium Namboole last Friday, Olympian Halimah Nakaayi was literally licking her lips at the prospect of returning to train from home.

Since Namboole was closed for renovation in 2019, a year special to Nakaayi as she was crowned women’s 800m World Champion in Doha, she has had to tweak a lot about her training for the last two Olympics.

She speaks for many athletes and even the Uganda Athletics Federation, which had to switch base to Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono to train athletes and hold competitions on a soil track. That leaves challenges in having standard times for qualification so most athletes had to find means of qualifying outside the country.

The worry for Nakaayi was not entirely on the expenses of that as it is taken care of by her management but “for us we have food that we love,” she shared.

“I had to learn some Dutch just to survive and speak with the locals although overall, the Dutch speak English,” Nakaayi, who usually trains at the Global Sports Communication camp in Nijmegen, said.

Adaptation to can also be a challenge but the athlete felt she was in the form of her life going into Paris 2024. Leading to Paris, she had broken her national record to one minute 57.26 seconds at the Diamond League in London on July 20 but stopped in the repechage heats in Paris.

She was apparently distraught and struggled to speak for days in the Paris Games Village “but I have recovered well and moved on. I am hoping for better performances to come”.

Utilization

The positive spirit was clearly on show as she toured the newly laid eight-lane tartan track in Namboole and also inspected works on the indoor warm-up room. Nakaayi had also seen the athletics facilities on the outside of the main stadium when she went to watch the Africa Cup of Nations football qualifier between Uganda and South Sudan. 

Namboole now has facilities to take care of all athletics disciplines. 

“This is at the standard that we see in most of the countries we visit. The track is well laid, properly marked and I believe if we put our efforts together, we can bid to host major events. I believe that we can even ask for a global leg of the Diamond Leg,” Nakaayi said.

“I want to thank the government, Minister of Education and Sports Maama Janet Museveni, the Parliament and the UPDF for ensuring that we get a standard facility,” Nakaayi added.

According to project engineer Col. Peter Seku, the first phase of reconstruction, which included putting the athletes and football amenities, is complete and they are just “waiting to be told when the President (Yoweri Museveni) will come to officially open it” and probably commission works for the second phase.

“The endorsement of athletes like Nakaayi is very important for our work. We did everything out of patriotism because it is important to us that we help in uplifting the sports sector through top facilities.

“Our humble prayer is that the facility is well utilized to groom the best athletes for tomorrow. I pray that Nakaayi and other top athletes from this nation continue to inspire the next generation to pick up interest in the sport and win us even more medals,” Col. Kidemuka said.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that UAF intends to start using the facility in March next year with over 10 events lined up at the stadium throughout the year.