Africa-Press – Uganda. Ugandans are bursting with pride after watching their country resist the trend of going medal-less at an Olympic Games event. Before Tokyo 2020, you needed fingers on one hand to count the times Team Uganda has medalled at the 15 quadrennial events it has figured in. Now you need a sixth finger.
Another seminal slice of history came after Peruth Chemutai enjoyed success in the women’s 3000m steeplechase final. Your columnist dispensed with any pretence of multitasking when the final found me in the midst of writing this column.
All eyes were on the 22-year-old steeplechaser whose sweeping assault on 18 barriers and five water jumps spread over seven-and-a-half laps produced a first for Team Uganda. At the 16th time of asking, we finally have a female Olympic medallist. And a champion at that!
Such feats are by all accounts greatly pleasing. While we wear them as a badge of honour, it’s instructive to be sensitised to the fact that difficult realities continue to intrude. Far from things looking likely to get considerably easier, Uganda’s Olympic disciplines still find themselves facing a rockier road.
Last week’s column highlighted how boxing is in a bind that is not entirely of its own making. Once upon a time, the sweet science was Uganda’s most successful Olympic discipline. Not anymore! As yours truly demonstrated last Saturday, the sport continues to slide either towards or further into chaos.
Athletics is now the flavour of the moment. But it too could face persistent headwinds sooner rather than later. After the heady heights of Tokyo 2020, the smart money has already installed the odds on the pace of progress slackening.
Complacency will slow traffic on the most desirable path to success. In order to take on the shape required of success, we should beware of resting on our laurels. It’s worth remembering that Team Uganda has 25 athletes in four disciplines representing a population of nearly 45 million. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Refugee Olympic Team has 29 competitors in 12 disciplines representing a population of 20.7 million who have fled their homelands. This is nearly thrice the number of athletes that competed at the Rio 2016 Games.
Uganda – supposedly with more resources at its disposal – meantime only improved its tally from the 2016 Games by four! While none of the IOC Refugee Olympic Team’s members had at the time of writing this won a medal in Tokyo, diversification from three to a dozen sports is commendable. For Team Uganda, the calling card looks set to remain in distance track events. Ugandans have consequently become confident enough of their supposed control that some are laying claim to being the home of distance running.
Joshua Cheptegei’s coach, Addy Ruiter, has always told your columnist that Ugandans shouldn’t indulge the lie of being a distance running powerhouse to such an extent that they don’t acknowledge their vulnerabilities.
The Dutchman says outside of Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo, Team Uganda has no elite distance runners. Any attempts to increase that number will run into speed bumps if we continue to have in our repertoire only one tartan track. Things have to change drastically!
The paradigm shift should involve more than just facilities. There is also a need to acknowledge that we are stuck in a medieval mindset. The mention of the name Chemutai invokes that of Dorcus Inzikuru. The winner of the inaugural women’s 3000m steeplechase event at the 2005 Worlds, Inzikuru’s career foundered when she chose to start a family.
The system didn’t come up with ample maternity benefits and guard rails to shepherd the Arua Gazelle back on the rails. The same system recently dealt a devastating setback to Stella Chesang. The reigning 10000m Commonwealth Games champion was overlooked for Tokyo 2020 because male suits were not convinced by her postpartum athletic performance. Chesang qualified for Tokyo 2020 pre-pandemic and had a baby during the pandemic. The 24-year-old wrongly thought she had worked her way back to some semblance of fitness.
The cold shoulder will doubtless knock Chesang’s confidence sideways heading into her Commonwealth title defence next year. Her tale and others more just about show that the time-tested route to the top is still a bridge too far for Uganda. It would be wise to hold back on the chest-thumping bouts.
Email: [email protected]Twitter: @robertmadoi
