Reigning World Champion Mary Moraa will lead other two debutants Lillian Odira and Vivian Chebet at this year’s Olympics in 800 m women.
The trio will however face a herculean task to win Kenya its 2nd gold in the 800m since Pamela Jelimo became the 1st Kenyan woman to win gold over the distance in 2008.
At the age of 24 Moraa is returning to the Olympic games after being eliminated at the semifinal in Tokyo 3 years ago, before winning bronze a year later at the World Championships in Oregon, USA.
Later in 2022, Moraa won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. She repeated the achievement in 2023 at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.
In the Olympic trials, she came in second place behind Lillian Odira.
Prior to helping her 4x400m mixed relay team win a bronze in the same games held in Accra, Ghana, in April of this year, Moraa had won the 400m gold medal in the All African Games.
The policeman later won the Kip Keino Classic Continental Tour and, in May 2024, the Doha Diamond League in Qatar.
After that, Moraa placed second in the Prefontaine Classic, setting a new personal best time of 1:56.71.
The 25 year old Odira won silver at the 17th Africa Senior Athletics Championships in Douala, Cameroon.
Odira managed a 4th finish at the All Africa Games in Ghana.
Vivian Chebet, the senior most member of the team; at 28, she won a bronze medal at the All Africa Games in Accra, Ghana.
With a personal best time of 1:58.26, Chebet is on her way to Paris after placing second at the June 2nd Diamond League in Stockholm and the Kip Kien Classic.
Chebet won the Meeting International de Montreuil, Stade des Grands Pêchers, Montreuil, in France in May and followed it up with another win at the 70th ORLEN Janusz Kusocinski Memorial, Stadion Śląski, Chorzów, Poland.
Her other accomplishments this year include a fourth-place finish at the World Athletics Indoor Championships and a fifth-place finish in the Nyayo Stadium Olympic trials.
