President William Ruto’s personal intervention helped Kenya overcome powerful European competition and secure the right to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships in Nairobi, Bid Committee chairman Ibrahim Hussein has revealed.
Ruto’s recorded video endorsement to the World Athletics Council, in which he personally committed the government to delivering a successful championship, came at a crucial stage of the bidding process and gave Kenya’s campaign a significant boost.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced on Tuesday that Nairobi had won the right to stage the 2029 World Championships, making Kenya the first African country to host the sport’s premier global event.
The announcement marked the culmination of a painstaking campaign in which Kenya sought to convince World Athletics that Nairobi could deliver not only a historic first for Africa, but also a championships capable of meeting the organisation’s exacting standards.
Hussein, the three-time Boston Marathon champion, said the President’s intervention was particularly significant because World Athletics had only asked for an endorsement from a government official.
“The World Athletics Council told us that we should have a government official endorse the 2029 bid. Actually, they said any government official, even a sports minister, would do.
“But then President Ruto made a video fully backing Kenya’s bid and committing that Kenya was ready and would host a successful event come 2029,” Hussein told the Star.
The Kenyan marathon legend believes Ruto’s personal backing became one of the defining moments of the campaign as Nairobi went up against European heavyweights London, Rome and Munich.
“It was that passionate plea and endorsement from the President that was a turning point. World Athletics saw that even our own President was serious about this event.”
But Kenya’s bid was built on more than political backing. Hussein said the campaign also fitted into World Athletics’ broader ambition of taking its flagship championships to parts of the world that have never hosted the event. “
World Athletics had said it wanted to expand the Championships to all parts of the world. “As a bid committee, we sat down and realised that South America and Africa had never hosted the premier event. We knew we had to put everything into this bid to succeed.”
He said Coe’s long-stated desire to see the championships staged in Africa before the end of his tenure provided another important pillar for Kenya’s case. “President Coe had also said he wanted to bring the World Championships to Africa before his tenure ends. That was another driving factor for us.”
Kenya’s athletics heritage also formed a central part of the campaign, with the country’s legendary distance runners lending their voices to the bid.
“We also have our legends like Kipchoge Keino, who is still alive, and he said he wants to see a World Championship before he eventually expires.”
The 2029 championships will carry particular significance for Kenya because World Athletics has announced the marathon will be removed from the main championships after 2029, and become a standalone annual championship from 2030.
For Hussein, that presented Kenya with an opportunity to give one of the sport’s most iconic events a fitting send-off. “Along the way, while we were making our initial bid submission, World Athletics told us the marathon would end in 2029. We were initially bidding for both 2029 and 2031 so that we could at least get one.
“Because we are a marathon nation and we have dominated the event for years, we decided to throw our full support behind the 2029 bid so that the marathon could come and end here in Kenya, although we were still pursuing the 2031 bid.”
Kenya’s ability to deliver on its promises was also put under the microscope when the World Athletics evaluation panel visited Nairobi.
Hussein said the delegation spent two days examining the city’s readiness, including hotels, venue security and traffic management, to establish whether the commitments made in Kenya’s bid dossier could be delivered in practice.
“They wanted to see whether we were indeed capable of hosting, checking hotels, venue security and also how traffic flows during rush hour.
“They saw that we had good coordination with the Ministry of Interior and Sports Kenya.” The delegation also toured the 60,000-capacity Talanta Stadium, which is scheduled to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, and Bomas of Kenya, which is being redeveloped into a major convention facility.
“They were really impressed with Talanta Stadium, although it lacks a running track, but it really impressed them because they saw the amount of effort we were putting into staging AFCON. “They also asked for the completion timelines for Bomas, which will accommodate many delegates.”
Hussein said Kenya’s previous disappointment in its bid for the 2027 championships also influenced the strategy that eventually delivered the 2029 victory. “It has been a long journey. We submitted a bid in 2025 and even reached the final two, but we lost to Tokyo because of their financial muscle.
“We took a break and decided not to bid for 2027 so that we could re-evaluate and return with stronger bids for 2029 and 2031.”
The victory has given Kenya a place in World Athletics history, but Hussein insists the hardest part of the journey begins now. With three years to prepare for the championships, he said the immediate priority is to establish a strong Local Organising Committee and begin planning well ahead of the event.
“Now we have to sit down and set up the Local Organising Committee. Getting the right people on board will be very key because there are technical areas you cannot compromise. “We also have to start advertising early throughout every county. We want to ensure that two years before the championships, we have already started selling tickets.”
