Linda Oseso Back In Hammer Throwing

Any athlete can retire from competition after seven years off. However, Linda Oseso has decided to take a chance and pick up the hammer once more, seven years after taking a hiatus.

“Last time I was here was for the trials in the 2014 Commonwealth games in Glasgow. It is interesting to be back again with the same team, similar people are still here competing and representing the country,” she said at her training base at the Kasarani stadium.

Oseso holds a personal best mark of 60.80m from ten years ago, and she is presently working to raise it. Linda, who arrived in the United States at the age of 11, was born in Kenya in 1990. She was born and raised in the Bay Area of California before relocating to Seattle, Washington, where she currently resides and attended graduate school.

Her first sport was basketball, and she only accidentally ended up in athletics. As a basketball player, she dropped an 11-kg dumbbell on her foot during one of her gym practices.

“Because of the long injury lay off, a friend of mine asked me if I was interested in doing track and field in the spring because basketball is a winter sport and I said yes! Why not?” she explains.

That is how she transitioned from basketball to shot put and discus. 

“I fell in love with shotput and discus, and eventually in my junior or senior year, a coach from the university UC Berkeley saw me at a track and field championship and told me, hey, I think you could be a good hammer thrower,” she continued.

Oseso was open to learning but was unsure about throwing a hammer. She had the chance to throw in college championships in 2007 and 2008.

She competed in her maiden match for team Kenya at the 2010 Africa Senior Championships in Nairobi, where she placed fifth. Since then, she has competed in eight competitions in Africa and won four times at the national level. Following her participation in two Commonwealth Games competitions in Delhi, India in 2010 and Glasgow, Scotland in 2014, she continued to compete for Kenya until taking a hiatus in 2015.

She returned, and in June 2022 she competed in the Africa championship that was held in Mauritius. She claims she did this to assess her readiness for the Commonwealth Games.

 “My target (at the Commonwealth games) is to do my best. I want to come out and represent the country well; im excited and honoured to be here and I thank Athletics Kenya and the ministry of sports for the opportunity to represent the country.”