One day Kenya will top medal table — but not via Rudisha

For most of us in Africa, the first week of the Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, did not happen.

There were a lot of strange games some people told me they did not quite understand. Stuff like the kayak slalom and artistic gymnastics.

When the TV cameras sweep the stands during these sports, there are few people.

Most could be the relatives of the sportsmen and women and other proud residents of their hometown. These sports do not make headlines in the mainstream media.

The thing, though, is that they hand out medals in those sports.

Thus by the time “our thing” — running — started at the end of last week, which is also when the Olympics began for us, some countries had collected more medals than the most competitive African countries at the games, such as Kenya and South Africa, can even dream of.

Then some of the sports such as swimming and gymnastics are truly stacked.

Take swimming, if you forget other water sports like polo, there are 18 events in it: 100m backstroke, 200m backstroke, 100m breaststroke, 200m breaststroke, 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 200m freestyle, 400m freestyle, men’s 1500m freestyle, women’s 800m freestyle, 200m individual medley, 400m individual medley, 4x100m freestyle relay, 4x200m freestyle relay, 4x100m medley relay, and marathon swimming.

Apart from the occasional South African, and sometime back Kenyan and diaspora Zimbabwean, Africa’s performance in swimming is torrid.

So, right there we have 54 medals that we shall rarely win.

2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS

The number of Olympic sports has grown from nine at the first Olympic Games in 1896, notes sports site Top End Sport. In Rio there are 42 disciplines.

For the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, baseball and softball, karate, sport climbing, skateboarding, and surfing have all been recommended for inclusion.

I checked, and there is no African country that has a league in any of these sports, so those are more medals we shall not win, putting the possibility of any nation on the continent ever topping the Olympics medal table out of reach for a century at least.

One can be forgiven for thinking that in one respect the Olympics are rigged in favour of sports from certain cultures and dominant nations.

If football were sliced up the way swimming is, there would be medals for best goalkeeping, best strikers, best defending, best middle-fielders, best goals, best corner kickers, best penalty, best heading, best dribbling, most assists, best spot kick, best chest play, longest goal, and so on.

That would improve the fortunes of countries like Nigeria, but it is doubtful that Africa would take most of these medals.

Therefore, to flourish at the Olympics, Africa needs to change its understanding of what these games do.

I have never really watched the finals of archery, but I suspect it is one of these sports where the winners do not wrap their national flags around their necks and run around the field.

I think Olympic dominance really lies in those sports that only your family and childhood friends show up to watch, and where you do not get to run the national flag.

These are the ones where the competitors from the small towns win gold.

Let us say you are from Nyeri and you win the gold for fencing in the épée swordplay.

No one in Nyeri really knows what that is, but they would all understand that you bagged gold at the Olympics.

There would be a big welcoming party for you at the Nyeri Country Club.

The local elite, disgruntled at the shortage of eligible bachelors in the area, would all be introducing their daughters to you.

You would be invited to speak to the schools in the area to “motivate the youth”, and half the county would all of a sudden be your relatives.

Or imagine for a moment that a Kisumu boy won bronze in windsurfing… there would be flowery songs composed and poems written about his exploits.

David Rudisha hogged local and international headlines when he won gold in the 800 metres, and Jemima Jelagat Sumgong in the women’s marathon.

But there were some sportspeople who only got mentioned on the Kenya Olympics website. Shehzana Anwar, for one, was a sole Kenyan entry — in archery.

The secret to topping the Olympics might lie, not with having more Rudishas, but a hundred more Shehzana Anwars.

The author is publisher of Africa data visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3