2011 All Africa Games, Maputo, Mozambique

Our Chess Team landed safely in Nairobi!!

The Men’s Team (credit to Mehul Gohil for the photos. Used without his permission!)

Githinji Hinga (left) and Martin Gateri in action

Martin Gateri,
Mehul Gohil,
Ben Magana,
Githinji Hinga,
Akello Atwoli,

and the ladies team

Purity Maina,
Gwen Jumba,
Maria Rehema,
Rose Wabuti,
Isabella Asiema.

Ben Magana in action

Team manager was Francis Ngesa and coach was John Mukabi.

We ended up 12th out of 14 teams and last in the Ladies section.

We were hoping for a bronze medal on one of the boards but that proved too elusive for our board 4 who won two games, drew three and lost two.  Was it a bad result?  Well I think we have a lot of work to do in chess if we want to succeed.

Kenya’s last medal in chess was in the 1980 Chess Olympiad in Malta when Saif Kanani won a Silver medal on Board 1 and in 1988 when William Arogo Juma won a Bronze medal in the Africa Junior.

The usual rumbling has started in cyberspace as to why we did so poorly and blame being heaped on the National Federation.  There is no point going over the same points over and over again.   Kenya can be powerful in chess within 5 years but first we need to get clubs organised.  Today there are only 3 clubs that have websites, two meet regularly.  A number of banks have chess teams and so do most of the universities.  We are talking about 50 teams at most.  Are there any events to get all these teams together. Hardly. We have the National League run by Chess Kenya, we have the Interbank event and one run by Nairobi Chess Club. In a country of 30 million people this is a joke…………What should we do?  I know where the solution lies. It is very simple.

Have you ever noticed that in Kenya the best team in most sports and the best athletes have one thing in common.  Yes they come from the Disciplined Forces.

In Football – we have Ulinzi Football Club (Kenya Army)
In Hockey – we have Kenya Police
Athletics – our most successful athletes have come from the Army or Police.  My hero Paul Tergat was from the Armed Forces.  Most of our gold medals at the recent World Championship in Daegu, South Korea were from the Kenya Police or Army.

I reckon that if the Kenya Army and Kenya Police took up chess we would move up the ladder very very quickly. So ladies and gentlemen – there is the solution. The question that remains is who will do it?

In the past we had two teams who took part in the National League – Moi Airbase and Laikipia Airbase, but it seems that the teams were disbanded which was really sad.

Here is the cross-table for the mens and ladies section.