Lessons to learn about ageing slowly while in prime shape from world’s fastest human

Just about the most interesting sports story I read this week was sprint machine Usain Bolt’s comments on ageing, injury and diet ahead of the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Beijing next month. It took me back to our own Henry Rono and what I wrote about his botched bid at a comeback at age 33 in 1985 but more about that later.

Bolt is 28 – or is it 29? Among a set of other good questions, Kerry McCarthy of Runner’s World magazine asked Bolt how, at 29, he was adapting to the ageing process. Bolt said: “Thanks for reminding me I’m getting old! But I’ll have you know that every three months I visit a doctor in Germany for a full body MOT (Motor Ordinance Test as in vehicles) and I’ve not failed one yet. I’m finding the training harder because my coach is pushing me more than ever.

“Normally we break in slowly at the start of the season and build up, but this year coach has started me off doing more reps than before, each one faster and with less rest in-between. He wants to shock my body into adapting quicker now that it’s a bit older.

“I have scoliosis [curvature of the spine] so I also have to make sure I do all my core strength work. (In terms of warding off injury) me and my coach had a difference of opinion about this and, not surprising, he won. I thought I needed to be gentle with myself and peak at the right time for important races, but he felt, as I’m getting older, that’s more risky, and that I should be in shape all the time.”

Bolt is gunning for three gold medals in Beijing, three in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympics next year and one, in the 100 metres, during the London World Championships in 2017. He first wanted to retire as the greatest sprinter of all time – now he wants to become the greatest athlete in history. His ambitions have been evolving with time beginning to win gold medals and then to set world records.

These days his biggest motivating factor is legacy when his time is done.

You must admire the plan of action of this extraordinary sportsman. You wish it on everyone, more so on our own because this is where our failures have been most painful.

You envy his support system – family and professional and most of all, his own discipline driven by vision. It makes you remember the debris that litters the road travelled by hundreds of would be Kenyan world beaters. For lack of one or the other, careers have become write-off wrecks. How many have I witnessed over all these decades?

Listen to Bolt and his travails with Kentucky Fried Chicken and alcohol: “I haven’t had KFC for about four months, which is killing me. I’ve tried to bribe my chef but not only is he not ‘bribeable’, he chases me round the house and makes sure I eat what he’s cooked. He also lays out my vitamin pills and supplements in front of me so I can’t ‘forget’ to take them. I eat a lot more vegetables – and I hate them all.

“I used to eat them occasionally, but now with every meal I have a plate just for veg. But I can’t get away any more with just winging it. To perform how I want I have to be perfect in training – and eating right is a part of training – so down it goes. I’ve backed off hard liquor, too – rum and stuff – but I still drink Guinness, or a Heineken or two. A guy’s got to have something, right?”

Desperate he may be for the “sin stuff” but he knows what’s good for his career and on his blind side, there is somebody to make sure he is covered. Therefore, barring the unforeseen, his ambition to be the greatest athlete in history is absolutely achievable. Then he can retire and enjoy the sights and sounds from his Kingston bar, Usain Bolt’s Tracks and Records amongst many other investments.

Although numberless are the Kenyan sportsmen and women who went down the drain before their careers seriously begun or just after that, some easily stand out from the rest because of the tragic weight of the fall. Top among them should be the story of Henry Rono.

In January 1985, I wrote this about him in my sports column: “Three years of total inactivity. A tremendous devotion to the products of Kenya Breweries. Absolute disappearance from the limelight. A massive addition of body weight. Loss of two world records. Not anymore. The wrong must be corrected. Where he was, is where he will be, probably further.

“One of the world’s greatest distance runners is ready to go again. Welcome back to the scene, Henry Rono. He’s the man who shattered the world’s 3,000 metres steeplechase, 3,000 metres flat, 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres records all in under two months. The world held its breath under his phenomenal running talent. Last Sunday, he participated in the Nairobi Dam relay race as a guest runner. The distance was four-and-a-half kilometres. Rono’s time: 16 min 0.2 sec.

“He said after the ordeal: ‘I feel so tired, but I am determined to keep it up.’ Don’t laugh. Rono has a mission. According to him, he is returning to the scene because “the standard of athletics in Kenya has deteriorated and needs somebody like me to revive it.”

“Thanks, Henry, athletics is starved of heroes.”

Rono, the globetrotter famously described by his coach as being “possessed of a mysterious talent”, was commanding appearance fees of $5,000 per race when such figures sounded like the number of stars in heaven. No vest commanded more awe than the yellow WSU (Washington State University) on his breast. And at a time when Kenyans turned up their noses at the mention of the names of so many awards of state honours, Rono’s Moran of the Burning Spear was universally accepted as richly deserved.

ALL WENT AWRY

Then all went awry. He turned to drink – and drunk with the same aggression that he went for world records. Thus he disappeared completely. The greatest Kenyan never to have won an Olympic medal through no fault of his own couldn’t be traced anywhere by where drink was being served in copious quantities 24/7. That is what we mean by the tragic weight of a fall.

Now he wanted to come back. Coach Philip Ndoo of blessed memory, once Sports Editor at the Nation and marathon for Kenya, told me: “There will be a natural inclination for Rono to push himself too hard and with the kind of weight he is carrying, there is a chance he could damage his muscles and ligaments. He will need somebody to restrain his zeal.”

The heart of a top athlete beats slower at rest than that of a person who does no sport at all. Ndoo told me: “When Rono was at his peak, his pulse was 36 times a minute. Now the fat man he is, it must be around 78 to 82. He can run here and there, win here and there with a pulse of between 50 and 60. But for him to get to his past form if ever he will, he must do a sustained training programme of some two years. If he trains properly, there’s nothing to stop him. His talent is unusual.”

Rono said he was coming back because he wanted to keep a promise – that of not quitting athletics until after 1986. He was zealous about putting things behind him – but the odds were stacked against him. Many people thought he was a has-been. And, tragically, he was still enamoured of the bottle. He just couldn’t seem to keep it away, although, somewhere in the future, he was finally, and thankfully, able to. He started a new life dedicated to coaching youngsters and warning them of his sad past.

If there is any lesson to be learned from the stories of Bolt, the biggest name in world athletics, whose life after the track is almost certainly secure and that of Rono, our tragic hero, is that so many factors must come together to ensure a successful outcome. These include good family support, choice of the right friends, competent and caring technical expertise, financial literacy and personal discipline on the part of the athlete.

As we see in Bolt’s case, there’s always somebody restraining him where he might become his own enemy. I have not heard of a sports leader in Kenya who speaks in these terms. There’s too much smallness inside our big people. If you ask me to give you the example of a leader who knows how to create greatness out of his people, you will be surprised that he is not even a sports leader per se. He is a military/political personality. In just a few years after an apocalypse engulfing his country, his sportsmen and women are now a regional power and that’s where many of our top talents are headed. That leader’s name is Paul Kagame and I wish he is around for a long time to come.

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The last word about the burning of the house of William Obwaka’s father’s in Ingo after the young man scored the two goals that floored AFC Leopards against Gor Mahia in the 1985 Cecafa Club Cup final in Sudan. It didn’t happen. It’s a myth. That’s the truth.

(READ: Gor class of ‘85 won Cecafa Cup in style)