Eugine Oregon — Kenya’s 100m speedster Ferdinand Omanyala has no regrets about his visa woes and the exit in the semis of the ongoing World Athletics Championships in Oregon.
In fact, the African record holder had just predicted a cliffhanger of sorts against his track adversaries.
At some point, Omanyala never knew he would make it Oregon, but fears of a “mission impossible” evaporated soon enough when the soft-spoken athlete waltzed into Eugene a few hours to the race.
“I never had a visa as of Thursday morning, so I got it around 10:00am. So again, we overcame that; and I got to the Airport straight to the track, did some warm ups and ran well in the semis.”
“I mean, running 10.10 under grueling circumstances, I have no regrets, just lessons picked that next time we’ll plan ourselves better.”
-Motivation –
Omanyala is nevertheless grateful of the myriad messages of goodwill he received well in time.
“Yes, the messages did motivate me a lot. So many people were watching; not just Kenyans and it drew a lot of attention.”
“For me I am the kind of guy who loves the hype and I was looking at the talk around it and I had not even run; so, it was a motivating factor because I had to stay strong for my people and myself.”
Omanyala had a conversation mostly with all the top athletes and even the Olympic Champion prior to boarding the flight to Eugene.
“All my race adversaries were wondering what’s going on as I was not the kind of athlete who could be having visa issues.”
“I mean there were so many messages of goodwill and I just appreciate the brotherhood that’s in this sport- such a nice feeling when people feel your presence in a time of difficulty.”
-Heat qualification/10.10-
Coming into the heats, Omanyala knew he would make it to the Semis-given that he was third fastest man in the season.
“Past the Semis I was a little 50-50. When I woke up on the day of the semis, I was feeling very tired and a little bit dizzy.”
“But then again, you can’t allow all of this to put you down. You really have to be strong mentally. The only thing that helped me was mental strength and positivity.”
Omanyala is of the opinion that a lion lives to fight another day.
“Life has so many different situations that may put you down but what really matters is how you pick yourself up. “
“In life you have to move on. I got to the Semis of my debut World Championships but the situation wasn’t so favorable so to say.”
“And the beauty about it all is that we are having the World Championships in one year’s time in Budapest and we have the Commonwealth Games in two-week’s time. You can’t keep on crying, yet you have many events to run. I have no regrets about Eugene.”
-Alex Isaboke is reporting live from Eugine, Oregon, USA-