This year wasn’t any different and the publication released names of 30 Africans sourced from four categories featuring 30 in each: Business, Technology, Creatives and Sports.
Here are 5 Kenyan sports personalities who made it into the 2019 Forbes Africa top 30 under 30.
Emmanuel Korir - Track and field athlete
Korir is the sixth-ranked fastest athlete in the men’s 800 meters, of all time. According to the IAAF, last year, he won all but one of his races.
He holds the record for the fastest outdoor time of the year, winning at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in London last year.
He clocked 1:42.05, making it the world’s fastest 800 meters performance since 2012.
He was nominated for the Male Athlete of the Year award in 2018 by the IAAF and won two gold medals at the African Championships, as well as the Continental Cup.
Faith Kipyegon - Track and field athlete
Faith is one of Kenya’s long-distance trailblazers. In 2017, she won gold after beating one of the world’s best, Caster Semenya, at the World Championships in London.
She is currently training for the next big race at the 2020 Olympics.
Kipyegon also won gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics and gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Beatrice Chepkoech - Track and field athlete
Chepkoech is an award-winning Kenyan track and field athlete.
She became the first woman to break 8:50 and 8:45 after clocking a running time of 8:44.32 in 2018.
Among some of the medals, she bagged are the two gold medals she received last year; one at the 2018 Ostrava IAAF Continental Cup and the other at the 2018 Asaba Nigeria African Championships.
Sabrina Simader - World-renowned ski racer
The 21-year-old Kenyan born in Kilifi is a world-renowned ski racer. She learned to ski in Hansberg, a small mountain in Austria.
Simader represented Kenya at the Winter Youth Olympics in 2016 in Lillehammer, Norway.
She was nominated for the Sports Woman of the Year and the Youth of the Year awards in the African Women in Europe organization 2017.
She plans to conquer the Winter Olympic Games in 2022 in China and the Alpine Ski World Championships in Italy in 2021, making her the second Kenyan after Philip Boit to represent the East African nation at the Winter Games.
She founded the Kenya Ski Association to groom other young Kenyans in the sport.
Margaret Nyairera Wambui - Track and Field Athlete
Wambui is an award-winning athlete. She won her first international gold medal when she was only 19, at the World Junior Championships in the US.
Last year, she earned herself a second spot at the Commonwealth Games in Australia, receiving the silver medal, after Caster Semenya.
She has over four more international accolades, including a bronze medal from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games.
