World Athletics President Sebastian Coe on Monday praised Kenya's 'national obsession' with Athletics at a year-end virtual conference with African Athletics journalists.

"It's not just a sport, it's not just a pastime, it's a national obsession. It's a passion!," said Seb Coe.

"When people close  their eyes and think about Kenya, so often the first images they have is  the Kenyan flag and your extraordinary array of talented athletes over  the years," he added.

Coe spoke on a wide range of issues and was happy that  World Athletics had tackled the Coronavirus-ravaged season well,  managing to put together several top competitions, including the successful Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi, Kenya in October 2020.

"The first  objective we set ourselves (after the pandemic struck in March), which was an understandable one because we are an athlete-centred  organization, was to do everything we possibly could to get the athletes back into training and then into competition," he explained.

"Secondly, because  the Olympic Games had been postponed, we needed to expedite our current review of the Olympic qualification standards and systems and release any changes we were making as quickly as possible to the athletes.

"To remove an  Olympic Games has a knock-on effect, in our case, for five years and so  it's really important that we were reorganising our calendar in a way  that was respectful to other events, particularly for some of you in Africa who consider the Commonwealth Games to be a very high priority. While the crisis  management in that department was taking place, we then had to maintain the focus of growing the sport in alignment with the strategic plan."

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