Mcelwa Nchabeleng

Mcelwa Nchabeleng

"Train hard and compete easy."

This is the Kenyan philosophy in athletics that has to be brought to the country by Danson Muchoki.

Muchoki is the top Kenyan coach who has been roped in by Athletics South Africa to assist local athletes.

The 50-year-old, who has been Kenya's national head coach for 25 years, arrived in the country last week to prepare the ASA squad for the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Amman, Jordan, on Saturday.

Muchoki jetted off with the squad yesterday.

"I spent some days with the athletes at training [in Potchefstroom] and I instilled the mentality of hard training," said Muchoki .

"I changed their training programme from two sessions to three a day. They were only training in the morning and in the afternoon but I changed this as we started training early in the morning, at 6am, at 11am and at 4pm.

"It is very important that we start training before we eat breakfast. Kenya is succeeding in athletics because of hard training and I don't see why South Africa can't emulate us if they can put in enough effort at training. But I must say that I was highly impressed with the level of commitment among the athletes. They also have the eagerness to learn new tricks."

Unlike many local coaches and managers, Muchoki would not promise medals in Amman.

"I can't say this," he said. "You can't just say we will win medals as if we will compete against ourselves. We will be up against the world's best and our athletes should know this for them to triple their efforts."

Speaking on behalf of the athletes, Tebogo Masehla, who will be competing in Amman, said everybody was happy with Muchoki.