Kenny taking it all in his stride
IF you were to ask the majority of Kerry sports fans to name the 21-yearold star with the Christian name ‘David’ who is continuously sparkling on a national stage, I am sure the first thought would go to the current Kerry senior football captain from Fossa. Clifford’s immense talent and growing potential is indisputable, but dig a little deeper and the name of David Kenny, from Rusheen in Ballyhar, and Farranfore/ Maine Valley Athletic Club, is equally deserving of being mentioned in the same pantheon of future Kingdom sporting sensations.
Picture what the race walker achieved on the first two weekends in March, before local, national and international sport ground to a complete standstill with the arrival of the Covid-19 coronavirus into all our lives. First of all, Kenny set a personal best of 19 minutes 45.97 seconds when winning the National 5km indoor championships at Abbotstown, beating the decorated and vastly experienced Brendan Boyce into second place by 22 seconds.
Was that just a lucky day? Not on your life. Fast forward one week and both men lined up against each other again, this time outdoors in the National 20km walk final in Raheny. The young Ballyhar native was even more impressive on this occasion. Smashing his personal best by three minutes, he recorded the fourth fastest time of an Irishman ever (1 hour, 23 minutes, 7 seconds) when getting the better of Boyce by a minute and 38 seconds, with Alex Wright third, two minutes and 22 seconds adrift of the Kerry man.
That performance propelled Kenny up the rankings, to a point where he was pretty much a certainty to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. Of course, the biggest sporting event in the world has now been postponed for a year, while the next big event on the walking calendar, the World team championships in Minsk in Belarus (due to be held on May 2 and 3), has also fallen by the wayside.
“To be fair, it hasn’t impacted too badly on my training. I was supposed to have that World Cup on the May Bank Holiday in Belarus, but that got cancelled. This month, my training was based on peaking for that,” said Kenny to The Kerryman this week.
“But, just to keep the focus, we are still simulating a race for that weekend. I am training very hard until then, and will take a break after. Then we will analyse the situation and re-assess what the calendar brings.
“There is nothing else on yet. The European Championships are still due to go ahead in France in the last weekend in August and, at the minute, there is no marathon or no walking events scheduled for them. The organisers are due to make a decision in mid-May.
“If they decide to put in the marathons and the walks, then I’ll be there. Hopefully, something will take place anyway.”
While many of us are struggling to pass the time or find ways of keeping together a routine during these seemingly never-ending ‘Lockdown’ days, Kenny is still training flat out, even if he is now restricted to a 2km circuit near his family home in Ballyhar.
“I’m doing between 120 and 140km per week. Three or four very hard days, followed by three or four recovery days. I am training twice a day, morning and evening. It is different every day. Even with the recovery days, you are doing 12 to 15km in the morning and six to eight km in the evening. You get used to it!”
What about the diet of a race walker? “The main thing is staying lean for most of the season. You have to try and get as much power out of your technique as possible. You are watching your calories all the time.
“It’s about getting good food into you the whole time, making sure that the body doesn’t break down. I would have about 3,000 calories a day, and you’d be burning it off. You wouldn’t be putting any massive emphasis on losing weight.
“It’s different to the shorter distance events. Once you get into a routine with your food, you are fine.”
Of course, Kenny is now under the training tutelage of one of Ireland’s greatest ever race walkers, Rob Heffernan, in Cork, where he is a part of a group that includes the afore-mentioned Boyce and South African Wayne Snyman.
“I actually started training with Brendan Boyce in Cork when I moved to study in CIT. He brought me up to see Rob, and he was impressed from day one. I think that was January 2019,
and after that, it just kicked off from there.
“It’s a professional environment, Rob is a two-time Olympian, he has given me the proper structure. Training is very hard, but the guidance is vital, he has done it all.
“Brendan has been a massive influence on me. It has obviously been in both of our interests to have somebody to train with in Cork. Last year, for every single training session, I was clinging onto Brendan for everything. We are feeding off each other big-time now,” added Kenny.
The Kerry walker has almost certainly already copperfastened his spot in the 20km walk at the delayed Tokyo Olympics – ‘I think I am ranked about 45th in the world right now. The top 60, when they take our three fastest times, get selected. I am pretty much certain, but the rankings don’t close until a month before Tokyo’ – believes that the year-long hiatus can only be a good thing for him.
“I would have been one of the youngest competitors if it was on this year. Obviously, I should be getting stronger and faster next year.
“At the start of July next year (July
8 to 11), I have the Euro Under-23s in Bergen in Norway. I’ll be looking for a medal there. I will be up there among the favourites anyway, so we’ll see how that pans out. Then Tokyo will be about three weeks later.”
Several Irish Olympic qualifiers in recent weeks have pinpointed that this prolonged period in isolation training in solitude will make or break athletes. What does the young Kerry man make of that opinion?
“Being alone is obviously the hardest part of training. When you are part of a group, it takes a lot of the mental pressure off. On your own, you have yourself to battle with for an hour, an hour and a half at a time.
“If you are determined enough to get through it, you will do it. For me, I am still aiming for that cancelled event on the May Bank Holiday. If you can train through this period, then you can train through everything.”
With the current pandemic making it extremely unlikely that the European Athletics Championships will go ahead in Paris in late August, David Kenny has no immediate confirmed date in the race walking diary to put his entire focus on. But, at 21 years of age, he knows that there will be many more races in his long-term future.
The Ballyhar inspiration is very clear of his ultimate athletics ambition.
“To win an Olympic medal. That is everyone’s ambition. We’ll see how it goes in the next few years. Going to Tokyo as a 21-year-old would have given me a massive boost, both to my profile and to my race walking experience.
“But we just have to wait a year now. That’s all good too,” he stressed.