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Cheptegei overlaps number two to win 10000m gold
Cheptegei crosses the finish line to bag gold at the at the EAUG at UCU, Mukono Campus yesterday. PHOTO BY AMINAH BABIRYE
What you need to know:
As Mark Lakwanamoi touched the tape 1:26 minutes later, Cheptegei, the IAAF World Junior Champion, was dancing away on a lap of honour.
KAMPALA- He did not even post 28:32.86, the time he run to win the IAAF World Junior Championships in Eugene – USA – in July.
Yet Joshua Cheptegei, 18, still destroyed a field of athletes that tried to live with him at the Eastern Africa University Games now into their third day at UCU, Mukono. He beat them with so much ease he could have sprinted on all day.
The Bugema University languages and literature student tore away from a four-man pace-setting squad with 14 laps to go, literally sprinting out the remaining distance to the 10,000m gold in 29:20.90. He overlapped the third and second runners en route.
10,000m RESULTS, MEN
Joshua Cheptegei 29:20.90
Mark Lokwanamoi 30:46.26
James Ngandu 30:54.04
COLLATED RESULTS: EA GAMES
FOOTBALL RESULTS
KIU 6-0 Masinde
Nkumba 0-0 Nkozi
Must 0-3 Mzumbe
Kyambogo 2-0 Zanzibar University
Ndejje 7-3 Busoga
BASKETBALL MEN
UCU 35-42 KIU
VOLLEYBALL MEN
MOI 2-1 MT KENYA
KISII 2-0 UMU
Ndejje 2-0 UNI OF RWANDA
VOLLEYBALL LADIES
MT KENYA 2-0 KYAMBOGO
NETBALL
IUIU 27-04 OUT
BUSITEMA 24-35 MUST
UMU 23-27 KENYATTA
MKWAWA 12-28 KYU
MMU 26-13 DODOMA
GAMES TITBITS
Kenyan runs bare foot
Excitement heightened at the Games yesterday as athletics finally took centre stage. Apart from Bugema student Joshua Cheptegei’s breathtaking run in 10,000m, Kenyan Meshach Ogech had his own surprise. The 24-year-old from Kenya’s Technical University plays rugby for his school and size 12 boots have not been hard to come by. There was no such luck, however, when it came to size 12 of running spikes. As such, Ogech found himself tussling bare foot, finishing last in 1500m race. “I was not even supposed to run but I just decided to give it a try,” he told Daily Monitor, “I have the right size for the rugby boots but I failed to get spikes.”
Results access burden
By 1pm we knew that Joshua Cheptegei and Moi University’s Lydia Chepkurui had been declared kings in the men’s 10,000 and women’s 5,000m respectively. But at the electronic timer, where journalists waited to pick real time results, the final list only read times of how they finished. No names, no bib numbers. Reason? When the Games organisers asked universities to make entries in each discipline events ahead of the games, they didn’t oblige, hence the madness. Obtaining the start list from the call room, which also didn’t have bib numbers on them, took eternity to arrive at the electronic timer table from where they were eventually manually entered.
Compiled by Andrew Mwanguhya
