THE OLYMPICS NOT JUST FUN AND GAMES

This week Peruth Chemutai gifted us with a happy moment in these bleak times.

The special police constable floated -- that is what it seemed like to mere mortals,  to gold in 3000 m steeplechase. She became the first Ugandan female medalist ever at the Olympics.

We have three ranked athletes in the men’s 5000m final later today as well as Winnie Nanyondo in the 1500m finals, so there may be more joy for Uganda yet.

With Chemutai’s win Uganda jumped into 46th position in the medal standings vaulting over more established sporting nations like Egypt, Israel and India.

"A look at the  medal tables serves as useful proxy for development or lack of thereof, in countries...

The top ten nations at this writing were China, US, Japan, Australia, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, New Zealand, Italy and France. While at the bottom of the log were Syria, Malaysia. Kuwait and Ghana. Of course other nations like neighbours Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Sudan don’t even win mention in the medal table.

Going by the table its clear that sporting success comes from the respective society’s economic surpluses. That the more successful countries have enough money left over after looking after their citizens’ basic needs to funnel into sports.

The top medal winning countries made a killing in sports such as gymnastics, swimming, rowing, weight lifting and equestrian sports among others. The common denominator in all these is the huge outlays required in building the facilities and supporting the athletes to train for these events.

Forbes magazine reported a few years ago that it costs no less than $20,000 (Sh75m) annually to train an archer or table tennis player for at least eight years to make it to the Olympics and not necessarily win gold. It cost about $100,000 annually for at least eight years to train a potential tennis professional.

Beyond the financial cost it takes at least 10,000 hours of systematic practice to attain world class standards in anything, in this case sport. Broken down that amounts to three hours a day, five days a week for ten years. Our sportsmen don’t match up to world standards because they have not done their 10,000 hours, but if you think about it how much would it cost to sustain that effort?

In most of these countries most of these costs are subsidised by their respective governments as well as corporate sponsorships. The national subsidies come from taxes.

On the above evidence our athletes are winning in spite of ourselves. Going by GDP, we are a poor country and hence how much our government spends on sports is miniscule and our corporates entities even less so. 

Kenya are beginning to fall behind, as diminishing returns set in on their natural model of raising athletes. For the first time since 1980 Kenya failed to win Olympic gold in the men’s steeplechase event.

Uganda, like Kenya are relying on our naturally endowed athletes from the east to rack in the medals, but this will only last so long. 

So what is Uganda to do to keep up the momentum? 

The more successful sporting nations have strong grass root structures, which were not primarily intended to build gold medalists, but to engage youth in beneficial activities and keep them away from crime.

This infrastructure has helped identify thousands of athletes who are then funneled into more specialised training.

So for starters we need to revive the schools'national competitions. Our schools are the most extensive network already in existence that we can leverage.

At the bare minimum this will identify talent, but strategies need to be formulated, financed and implemented to take these budding talents to the next level.

But most importantly our sports organisations have to get professional management. This mode of volunteer managers who are there because they were voted into office and not necessarily on merit, is an archaic model that will take us nowhere soon.

Otherwise congratulations again to our medalists at the Olympics – Chemutai, Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kilimo. We wish the latter two and Nanyondo good luck in their races later today.