By Sean cardovillis
Once again it was our athletes who raised the profile of Kenya, with Wilson Kipsang’s stunning 2 hours, 3 minutes and 23 seconds in Sunday’s Berlin Marathon shaving 15 seconds off Patrick Makau’s record set in the same race two years before.
It’s interesting to note that this is the ninth time the record has been broken on the super-fast course, the eighth in the last fifteen years, and Kipsang is only the third Kenyan man to break the record following Paul Tergat and Makau.
Congratulations to the favourite Florence Kiplagat for winning the women’s race, although it appears that pressure maybe mounting on the women to emulate the men, as it has been almost eleven years to the day since Catherine Ndereba relinquished her record to current record-holder Paula Radcliffe on the 13th October 2002.
Even though our sports stars are going around the globe and earning Kenya recognition — from the track, to the rugby pitch, to the swimming pool with the Dunford brothers — they are still some way from gaining recognition with the general public here.
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Apart from maybe Collins Injera, who would recognise the other members of Kenya’s all-conquering Sevens squad if they were walking down the street in their casual clothes?
It is a combination of lack of marketing by sports stars and also the Kenyan public’s priorities when it comes to whom are ‘celebrities’ in their lives!
If a Kenyan politician like Nairobi Senator Mike Sonko was to enter a shopping mall, or one of our own singers like Prezzo, than you can almost guarantee that there would be a small buzz within that mall.
Our living at ‘Sean Cardovillis Consulting Ltd’ is to be an agent for this very reason.
We and many others can be the driving force towards changing this perception and revolutionizing how the public views sports and sports personalities.
Kenya is just starting to reach a point where her athletes are being recognised as superstars in their own right, with personalities such as Paul Tergat, Collins Injera and Julius Yego signing lucrative contracts with corporate firms.
However there is still a long way to go, because if you look at South Africa as an example, sports stars like cricketer Jacques Kallis, rugby player Bryan Habana and Olympic swimming gold medalist Cameron Van Der Berg grace magazines and billboards around the country and can barely walk around with getting mobbed by crowds for autographs.
This is where I would like to see our sports stars reach – I want them to be the new rock stars of the Kenyan media!
What’s on this weekend?
The KCB National Rally Championship returns to action tomorrow with the popular Guru Nanak Rally.
The event will be preceded by a minute’s silence to honour the victims of the Westgate tragedy, with all competitors wearing black armbands.
Following the event, competitors and officials will head to the MP Shah Hospital to give their donations to the victims.
Football and technology
Away from local sports I was watching a fascinating weekend of English Premier League football — and one thing that struck me (for the umpteenth time), apart from the shock results involving the Manchester teams, were the game-changing controversial decisions that could have been solved through the use of a ‘fourth official’.
The English Premier League debuted the use of goal-line technology this season, primarily to confirm if the ball has crossed the goal line completely, thereby awarding a goal if the officials on the pitch are not 100 per cent certain through their angles.
However, the other decisions on the pitch do not rely on technology, and it’s high time teams were given ‘two chances’ per half, like in tennis or cricket. If they lose a contested decision, they lose the ‘chance’, after the referee has consulted the ‘fourth official’.
The teams would resume the second half with ‘two chances’ apiece.
Trust me the drama of the fourth official reviewing the incidents on screen will create the same tense atmosphere as in cricket, tennis and rugby and football can finally move into the 21st century!
— The writer is a sport journalist and runs a consulting firm.
