Ikpeba: Soya Gala huge inspiration to Kenya’s upcoming stars

Eliud Kipchoge (right) receives the 2019 Sports personality of the Year trophy from Sports Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed at the Soya gala in Mombasa on January 24, 2020. 

What you need to know:

  • Nigerian football legend was celebrity guest at Mombasa awards ceremony

Nigerian football legend Victor Ikpeba’s been there, done that.

Having criss-crossed European capitals, eking out a living from professional football, the 46-year-old star has seen it all.

But last weekend, the former Super Eagles forward was humbled as he watched Kenya’s finest sports stars decorated on stage at the 16th Safaricom Sports Personality of the Year Awards Gala at the Mombasa Sports Club.

Ikpeba had earlier on mingled with Mombasa’s flagship football club, Bandari FC, where excited players of the Kenyan Premier League Club soaked in his thoughts on how to navigate through the amateur ranks to play the professional game in Europe.

“There’s no short-cut to success,” he told the players. “You must work hard to make even the fans demand to see you play because you are the best.”

Ikpeba was later thrilled at sharing the same platform and dinner table with Kenyan distance running legend Paul Tergat, founder of the Soya Awards, during Friday night’s Gala at the Mombasa Sports Club. But he was even more touched seeing young sports stars walk onto the stage to collect their trophies for outstanding performances in 2019.

“The attention should be on nurturing this emerging talent to ensure that the tap of relentless talent never runs dry,” Ikpeba, a member of Nigeria’s 1996 Olympic Games gold medal-winning squad, said.

PUSHED HUMAN LIMITS

And Tergat couldn’t agree more, paying tribute to the award recipients for a stellar season in 2019.

“Our country went through amazing sporting moments in the year under review. It is the year our athletes broke records and pushed our human limits beyond what we have always imagined,” Tergat said in his gala speech.

“With these extraordinary conquests, I am confident that we have kicked off in earnest our road for another bountiful medal harvest at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics later this year,” Tergat, himself an Olympic 10,000 metres silver medallist (Sydney 2000), added.