Kiprotich and the Ugandan complex

Ugandans have accused each other of getting too excited too early, false bravado and settling for less in regard to our place on the global scale of sport, education, innovation, industry, economics and all else.

It is something I have always found unfortunate - even where it is true - a sentiment reawakened by some comments and one major headline since Stephen Kiprotich placed sixth at the London Marathon Sunday.

It has always been clear to me that we possess an inherent inferiority complex, evident in the mannerisms of the lowly of society but even more pronounced within our elite and intellectual, which has had me believing we are not good enough and that our achievements are flukes, one-offs etc.

Rather than point fingers, attempt justifications or go defiant, we ought to admit to this and set out to fight it together. Let us not be fooled, overhyping ourselves is way better than beating ourselves up. At the top of the scale the Americans and Chinese do it, further down the English and South Africans have mastered it, and closer to home it has been adopted by all except us, from the Nigerians to the Kenyans. We have to feel good about ourselves, no one will do that for us.

While Kiprotich is clearly not a case of too much hype, there is the risk of us pulling our own down especially since the finer details of athletics are not with most of us in the same way as, say, football.

Those who expected the Olympic champion to win the London Marathon will not have known that his personal best was way below a good fraction of the field, or that the dynamics were complicated by pace setters etc. They would thus be disappointed and explanations of those dynamics, or that at 24 Kiprotich has plenty of ‘marathon time’ before peaking would sound like excuses.

Of course Kiprotich has to be wary of the supposedly obvious issues which many achievers outside Uganda don’t take for granted. He no longer has the element of surprise as a weapon; the Olympics are usually tactical races but other marathons are about time and money and he should lower his personal best; he has to work even harder and steer clear of the vagaries of life that usually cut short the reign of Ugandan champions, Kassim Ouma for one…
He really has the opportunity to help Ugandans overcome age-old complexes and believe.

mmssali@yahoo.com
@markssali on twitter