Agents, too, battle for medals in World Championships

IN LONDON

Before Tuesday night’s finals, Dutchman Jos Hermens’ Global Sports Communications (GSC) was leading in the agents’ medals table with three gold medals, two of them won by Kenya’s Geoffrey Kirui and Faith Chepng’etich.

The third gold in GSC’s catch is women’s 10,000 metres title won by Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana, while the Nijmegen-based management stable has also garnered a silver through Colombia’s women’s long jump star Caterine Ibarguen.

Besides the competition between countries, athletes’ representatives - or agents as they are better known – also draw battle lines in rivalries of their own with the success in medal collection signalling a major business boost.

London-based Ricky Simms, whose Pace Sports Management handles Jamaican legend Usain Bolt and Great Britain’s distance running sensation Mo Farah, had by Monday garnered two gold medals.

Other managers in the hunt, and with at least a gold medal each won by their athletes by Monday, include Lee-Roy Newton, Valentina Fedyushina, Karen Locke, Andy Stubbs and Helena van der Plaesten, Kimberly Holland, Marc Corstjens, Claude Bryan and Alberto Suarez.

GSC’s success stories include Olympic marathon champion Eliud Kipchoge and Uganda’s 10,000m silver medallist here Joshua Cheptegei. Kenya’s hope in the women’s 5,000m Hellen Obiri and Olympic 5,000m champion Vivian Cheruiyot both belong to Simms’ Teddington-based stable.

While celebrating Kirui’s victory in the marathon on Sunday, GSC’s representative here, Valentijn Trouw, said their management’s main focus is on athlete longevity.

Trouw said, for instance, they won’t be in a hurry to enter Kirui into another marathon this season despite the fact that after victories in Boston in April and here last weekend, he leads in the World Marathon Majors Series rankings.

The overall points winner in the five-event series earns a $500,000 (Sh50 million) jackpot and the World Championships marathon is part of the series whose remaining legs this year are next month’s Berlin Marathon along with the Chicago and New York marathons in October and November respectively.

“We won’t pressure Kirui to run in New York, for instance, because he is still very young in the marathon and for his career to stretch long, we need to plan his races well rather than just look at the money,” Trouw said.

Previously, some managers have been accused of making athletes run too fast too frequently for monetary gain, making them burn out after a very short time and end their careers prematurely.