Africa’s fastest 100m runner, Ferdinand Omanyala will now be coached by top African sprint coach Geoffrey Kimani.
The renowned Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coach, who also has deep roots in coaching sprints and hurdles, made the announcement on his X (previously Twitter) handle.
“Back on track and greatly honored in taking up the role of Sprints Coach to Ferdinand Omanyala through a busy 2024 season. We will be kicking off the season with the World Indoors in March 2024. Onto the hard work!” the tactician announced.
Kimani was the S&C coach for Team Kenya to the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the sprints and hurdles coach for Team Kenya to the World Championships in 2015.
He is a World Rugby S&C educator, a World Athletics sprints and hurdles lecturer, and is part of the elite athlete performance commission at the National Olympics Committee of Kenya (NOC-K).
Previously, Omanyala was coached by Marcel Viljoen, the founder of Fitness From Africa, with over 25 years of coaching experience and success stories ranging from 100 metres to marathons.
Most recently, the Commonwealth Games champion was under the tutelage of Duncan Ayiemba, the man who was, in 2018, sanctioned with a two-year ban for ‘administration or attempted administration of betamethasone’ in a case where the sprinter was handed a 14-month ban for adverse analytical finding (AAF) for the glucocorticoid betamethasone.
Under Ayiemba in their second stint of working together, the sprinter had a disappointing outing at this year’s world championships, failing to medal despite being tipped as one of the favourites.
After his Budapest show, where the 27-year-old finished seventh in a race won by Noah Lyles, coach Ayiemba was quoted by several media outlets as admitting that the sprinter’s mental health had taken a nosedive, hence his silence on social media at the time.
