Category Archives: Sports business

Sports wrap: seeking new Choices

Formula One
Choices does not roar anymore
Ka-choi or Choices on Baricho road used to be a destination of choice for grand prix races. It was one of the few places that would show a race early in the morning (e.g. Australia, Japan, China races) or even if Man U and Arsenal were playing at the same time.

But after fiascos in the last two races, they seem to have lost interest in racing and its fans. Yesterday they couldn’t get the picture on, and kept a group of us waiting for half an hour while some patrons watched rugby (live from Hong Kong). They didn’t try to find the race channel till after 7 a.m when the race started, and they did not have that channel! We missed the start, which is an important part of all left and then all left and drove to GP Karting (at the Carnivore) to watch the rest of the race. I was surprised to find the place open, but they had some morning kart races organized by Kenya motorsports foundation.

For the last race, the picture went off at Choices at the start of the race, as it did in some other locations. It may not have been their fault, but they may need to upgrade their dish to get a more reliable feed. I will not visit them for races and will in future go to GP Karting or Soho’s which I was told guarantees to show a grand prix race, anytime of the day or night.

Alonso = Chelsea
Fernando Alonso won his second race of the season, giving his Renault team a hat trick of wins to start the season. Alonso is now truly on his way to replacing Michael Schumacher as ‘the Man in F1’ – as he now attracts equal measure of admiration and hate. He combines the confidence and arrogance of Senna and Schumacher (what’s that ridiculous ‘bunny ears’ celebration about?) out of the cockpit with mature and calculated driving on the track – making him a consistent and predictable (or boring) winner as Chelsea. The remarkable thing is that he is at Renault who are beating bigger budget teams (Ferrari, Mclaren, Toyota, BMW) – but has already signed to drive for Mclaren in 2007.

Soccer
Manchester won against Bolton while Chelsea had a draw leaving a 7 point gap between them. Could history repeat itself as it did three years ago when Arsenal, who enjoyed a comfortable lead at the top of the table, slumped at the end of the season allowing Man U to overtake them to the title?

Boxing
Congestina Achieng lost her fight to an American challenger on Saturday, disappointing many of her fans who expected her to stage another knock out performance of her opponent who instead jabbed her way to a points win of Congestina. Her fighting style reminds me of Mike Tyson in the later stage of his boxing career where he ferociously (his words) punched to knock out his opponents early in the fight, but did not appear to have the stamina or strategy to fight and win a longer bout. In her last fight, Congestina struggled to a points win and hopefully this experience will be good her and she will now work with her managers and trainers to improve.

Safari rally returns in a way

Today marks the start of the East African Classic Safari Rally at Mombasa, which will then run through Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Nairobi, the Mara, Eldoret, Nanyuki, Voi and then back to Mombasa for the finish.

It features many pre-Schumacher-era drivers that older Kenyans will remember such as Duncan, Kankkunen, Blomqvist, and Waldegaard who will be driving even older cars such as the Datsun 240Z, Mercedes 450 Ford Escort, Porsche 911 and Lancia Stratos pictured– all from the 70’s era.

Without a genuine international WRC rally, the event is mostly a nostalgic and unique tourist attraction for the country, but still a gruelling event for the drivers who will cover several thousand kilometres over 10 dusty days.

Still, I’d like to see future Classic rallies that involve group B or monster cars of the 80’s such as the Ford RS200, Lancia 037 & Delta S4, Peugeot 205 T16 and Audi Quattro Sport pictured – which unleashed an era of noisy and large rally supercars that had 500+ horsepower, four-wheel-drive, and many other high-tech pieces.

A good day in New York, not Nairobi


Paul Tergat of Kenya breaks the tape just ahead of South Africa’s Hendrick Ramaala, winning the closest ever New York City Marathon

But Kenyan sports stars don’t get respect in Kenya, when pitted against English Soccer. The live showing of the New York marathon unfortunately coincided with the broadcast of two English premiership games. At a local Nairobi bar, we were able to watch the finish of the women’s marathon, which coincided with half time of the Manchester United/Chelsea game, but the bar TV went back to the second half of the soccer match, meaning we were not able to watch the thrilling conclusion of the men’s marathon.

Christmas Holiday
I visited the tourism expo at Sarit Center to find a Christmas holiday package at the coast, and I also learned that:
– all most Mombasa hotels are fully booked for the Christmas – New Year week.
– High season begins just after December 20, and hotel charges will be about double what they usually are, until April 2006.
– Packages are still available up till mid-December such as:
(i) Indian Ocean Beach Club: 2 nights at half board, including return flight (Kenya Airways: Nairobi – Mombasa – Nairobi) for Kshs. 16,680 per person ($230) valid up to December 20
(ii) Turtle Bay Beach Club: weekend package i.e. 2/12 – 4/12 or 9/12 – 11/12 including return flight (Nairobi – Malindi – Nairobi on Air Kenya) for Kshs. 18,550 ($255)

Other accommodation offers which impressed me were from Club Le Soleil and Kenya Bay Beach Hotel. I gave emphasis was to air packages because the road to Mombasa (I’m told) continues to be a motoring nightmare (and national shame) – someone told me he recently drove from Nairobi to Mombasa in a reasonable 7 hours (but that the final 50 km stretch from Mariakani to Mombasa took up two hours because the road was so bad).

Anyway, I don’t feel like driving, and I am comfortable getting around Mombasa by matatu, so my focus was on air travel to the Coast, not by car.

More debit cards
Another bank that has added debit cards is National Bank of Kenya (NBK) which launched a visa-electron branded card at the end of October. This was a week before KCB and Southern Credit launched theirs.

Land – uncertain returns:
Landowners such as the National Social Security Fund continue to have problems disposing of prime parcels of land partly due to the uncertainty over land titles, a government notice to recall undeveloped land, and the huge cost of developing commercial land within the city e.g. to put up a modern building in the city with excellent parking, amenities and security would cost over 1 billion shillings today.

Since February when the NSSF first tried to sell several prime undeveloped plots they have only sold a few including 50 acres near Karen and 2.5 acres in Upper Hill, while the rest were re-advertised last week.

Hotel wars
There was a mishap with a Kenya Airways international flight over the weekend, and the plane returned to Nairobi for a check. Once again, the airline checked passengers into the new Panari hotel, near the airport, and not at the traditional airline hotels in downtown Nairobi.

Block shares
After CDC (UK) sold off 5% of the Housing Finance, another investor (likely to be NSSF) has put up 2.75 million shares of KPLC – aiming to raise over 430 million shillings from the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Kenya seeks Cricket Coach in West Indies

The Kenya Cricket Association is seeking a highly qualified National Coach initially to develop and prepare their National Team , who will be responsible for the overall management of the international program which includes planning, development, implementation and evaluation of specialised cricket training and competition programs, and development of younger talent for the future.

Good Sports News Day

Cricket
An Indian newspaper reports that Kenya may be among six countries that could start playing one-day international cricket by the end of the year against Test Nations to give them more international exposure.

Soccer
Even though spectators will be barred from attending the Kenya vs. Tunisia World Cup qualifier, the match will be shown on Super Sport (confirmed: Saturday 03 September 15:45 – 18:00 SS3) and perhaps on NTV or KBC.

Motor Rallying
The 2006 Kenya Safari rally will be held in March 2006. It will be classified as a round of the African Rally Championships (ARC), and if successfully and profitably staged, could lead to the Safari being a World Rally Championships (WRC) event in 2008.