Our athletes should get smarter to conquer the world

On Sunday, thousands of unknown and upstart athletes are participating in the 6th StanChart Nairobi International Marathon. At the end of the gruelling race, the winners will be garlanded and gifted with money.

Truth but tragic, Sunday’s winners may never be heard from again. Like many other Kenyan athletes before -- both in local and international races -- they appear from nowhere, win and disappear!

On Thursday, October 29, 2009, Usain Bolt will arrive in Kenya on charity and environmental mission. Bolt is the world’s record holder and champion in 100 metres, 200 metres and 4x100 metres.

Like lightning, he has struck the world with his athletic prowess and, in his wake, he leaves all awed. The world hasn’t heard the last of Bolt and we will not, for a long while.

It is time Kenyans confront the dark truth as to why, though our athletes are world champions, we have no icon like Bolt. If you check on any available statistics of the world’s highest paid or influential athletes, no Kenyan appears anywhere.

This year, Tiger Woods will be the first athlete to gross $1 billion, yes, One billion dollars in prize money and endorsements.

In confession, Paul Tergat is my best friend. When he was winning marathon races from London to New York, Berlin to Chicago, I flew to those cities to cheer him and to join his beautiful wife Monica at the finishing line to congratulate him and hoist the Kenyan flag high.

I did this because of our friendship and because I was proud of Tergat’s humble background and his sheer scaling to the top of the world. I was also proud of being Kenyan.

And in all his post-race press conferences, I always knew that he will answer all questions intelligently and with poise. There was not a single day he embarrassed me at press conferences. Tergat is the first and last Kenyan iconic athlete of our generation. And the reasons are plenty.

Isaiah Kiplagat, Chairman of Athletics Kenya (AK), told me this week that the IAAF intends to make the X-Country World Championships bi-annual instead of current annual allegedly because Kenya and Ethiopia are dominating it and the world is losing interest.

Since the championships began in 1973, Kenya has won 253 medals and Ethiopia 214, and the rest of the world less than 60! But is the dominance by Ethiopia and Kenya the main reason for this demotion? Isn’t US and Jamaica dominating all races from 100 metres to 400 metres relays and they are being run weekly? The truth is sadder.

Our athletes are, by and large, from village schools and mainly from Kalenjin and to a lesser extent Kikuyu tribes. Most of them begin running in primary school and their level of education is stunted there. Because of it, their language of communication is mainly their mother tongues or a smattering of poor Kiswahili.

To them, English may as well be Mandarin. After winning in their races, they are hardly interviewed by international media and, in the few instances when asked their strategy for winning, they say something like this: “I run, I run, I run, I win and I prayed!”

Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, David Beckham and Manny Pacquiqo receive multi-million-dollar endorsements for few reasons: their eloquence in English, their fashion style, their poise and above all their charisma and presence.

These are athletes who ooze confidence and presence and when they walk into a room, even a dictator stands up for them. In my travels with Tergat, I have seen strangers in Milan and New York walking to him and literally crying for meeting him. If you cannot make strangers weep when they meet you, then you are no icon.

One reads in our local media how our athletes have won millions in races and we say wow! Only if we knew how much more they can earn but cannot. Last year alone, Tiger Woods earned $99,737,626 (in excess of Sh7.5 billion) with huge endorsements from Nike, Pepsi and AT&T. As long as our athletes speak pesa nane English, no multi-national will endorse them.

It isn’t speaking with Kalenjin or Kikuyu accent that matters but speaking Class 3 English. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, speaks English with Austrian accent and Bolt does with Jamaican flavour. Our athletes speak Class 3 English and then mangle it up with tribal accent.

With the amount of money they earn and will earn, spending a little part of it to be posh and polished is worth every cent. When our athletes wear mitumba or suits made in River Road, their global reach will be beyond them.

Once they improve their English and start wearing Ozwald Boateng, Michael Bastan, Versace and Dolce&Gabbana; Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike and Puma will call on them. The few million shillings they earn in a year will be millions of dollars.

It doesn’t matter how many records one breaks or what football clubs one has been signed into, language and style limitation is real limitation. This applies equally to our musicians.

Till the athletes and musicians learn to speak English and style up, Tergat will be the only Kenyan true celeb that all international athletes and Hollywood stars call on when they come to Kenya. Our athletes are so great yet so far away. What wasted talent. What tragic situation.

dkipkorir@ktk.co.ke