A great athlete remains relevant after retirement

I believe our athletes and coaches are now armed with the necessary knowledge in various fields as they head to Christmas after three days of brainstorming during the Athletics Kenya Conference at the Safari Park Hotel last week.

The event attracted about 150 athletes, who were taken through various topics including anti-doping, values and ethics, career development, investment and taxation, travel and visa, retirement.

Others were legal and contractual and media and self branding among others. To be precise, the conference was a one-stop-shop for any athlete who wants to take his or her career forward.

The truth is that a great athlete does not start and end at just running and winning. As we gathered, there is more to athletics career.

As one of the presenters said, “you can be a good athlete but not a great one. A great athlete, he said, is one who remains relevant to the sport after the career and a good athlete is one who only wins.

A great athlete should be able inspire generations with his or her deeds and medals and not hang the latter to gather dust.

As we all know, an athlete’s career is, at maximum, about 10 years, though some are lucky to go beyond 15 years like world record holder, Eliud Kipchoge and Vivian Cheruiyot. But this calls for a lot of discipline and focus hence there is no two ways about it.

Clearly, we learnt that careers that are driven by doping and indiscipline don’t last long.

Athletics Integrity Unity set the ball rolling as they took us through the hazards of doping and our very own athletes picked it up from there.

Matthew Kisorio was bold enough to own up to his wrong decisions and take fellow athletes through his doping journey.

However, he was very clear about one thing — it wasn’t worth it as he underwent untold suffering. Rejection by fellow athletes and friends was one of the main stigma.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics 800m champion Wilfred Bungei, shared his struggle with alcoholism after retiring and urged the athletes to shun the same and stay focused in life.

Bungei’s story was so touching and one could tell of its impact from the athletes’ concentration.

The sentiments, especially from the two athletes, was priceless and there could be no better Christmas gift for the athletes than that.

To say the least, the conference was a game changer and it is up to the athletes to choose what is best for them going forward.

I am sure the presenters changed a lot of lives and I can only hope that this will be translated into better results going forward.

At the end of it all, we were singing one song — “Say no to doping … win clean and fair”.