Why boxers, weightlifters, unlike track and field athletes, don’t feel at home

In just three weeks, Joshua Cheptegei ran three races, won two and finished second in one, received a third car from the President and became over Shs100m richer.
Yet he chose to end his 2021 season with more lucrative events to spare.  

Meanwhile, boxer David Ssemujju has only fought once in 18 months – a loss to Algerian Youness Nemouchi at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Back to his ghetto, the 2019 African Games silver medallist is unsure of what next.
That’s the tough wall between Uganda’s runners and other athletes, which partly explains why boxers, rugby players, weightlifters, netballers go to international events with a secret mission to stay abroad, yet runners return home.

A week after receiving a brand new Mitsubishi Pajero from President Museveni for her gold in Tokyo, Peruth Chemutai bagged $1,500 (Shs5.3m) for finishing seventh in the 3000m women’s steeplechase at the Prefontaine Meet in Eugene, Oregon US. 
But boxer Catherine Nanziri, who lost her flyweight bout in Tokyo, and her captain Musa Shadir Bwogi, are fading into near oblivion, probably wishing they hadn’t returned.

Huge money gap
At the 2019 World Championships in Doha, the total prize purse of $7.53m was distributed to athletes who finished in the top eight of each event. Halimah Nakaayi, who won the 800m final, bagged a whopping $60,000 (Shs220m) in prize money.
That could beat the gross revenue boxing promoters’ have made from Ugandan events in the last 10 years. No wonder some pro boxers earn nothing as promoters contend with losses after events.

Last year, Uganda Tourism Board chose Cheptegei, who had just set three new world records, as its tourism ambassador, the first from sports. The financial details of the year-long deal are unknown, but they enrich Cheptegei’s net worth, which is estimated at around $4m (Shs14 billion).

Yet, World Athletics announced that the prize money will be more at the 2022 World Championships in Oregon. World Athletics also granted up to 193 athletes in 58 countries with $3,000 (Shs10.5m) each to cater for basic living costs such as food, accommodation and training expenses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year, only six professional boxers received Shs2.7m as Covid-19 Relief Fund from the World Boxing Council, the biggest professional boxing body.
Since February 2020, no pro boxing event has happened in Uganda.

Meanwhile, amateur boxers got food rations from their national federation.
In 2017, Comosa AG founded the World Boxing Super Series, to make professional boxing more attractive. The elimination tournament features the world’s best boxers, fighting for a total of $50m (about Shs177b) in prize money plus the Muhammad Ali Trophy, hyped as the greatest prize in boxing.

Geographically, Muzamir Kakande is the closest Ugandan to this lucrative venture but the Germany-based fighter, who only turned professional in March, needs to triple his effort to get close to the tournament. He must become a world champion, or be a mandatory contender for a major world title.

But even if he does not, Kakande, a 2017 African welterweight gold medallist, who stayed in Germany after the 2017 World Championship, is in a much better place. Four years ago, he was only an amateur boxer and a fish vendor in Kampala slums.
People were startled by photos of Chemutai training on makeshift hurdles before she won steeplechase gold. But who cares that boxers train in dusty or muddy makeshift gyms in the ghetto, some roofless, with old car tyres as punching bags?
Disunity in the boxing administration right from the international level has not helped money matters.

The amateur wing, led by Aiba, treats professional bodies like WBC as poachers who grab talent without investing in its nurturing. Yet the professional bodies see Aiba as a poor mother who can’t feed her children but won’t allow them to eat from the neighbourhood.
Professional bodies also failed to unite and smaller ones that emerge as offshoots of big ones.
Athletics, football, and basketball, among others, have their issues but have gained a lot in running the amateur and professional wings under one umbrella.

Hard work, no pay
Besides prize money, endorsements and appearance fees, some track and field athletes earn from setting pace for others in big races. In October 2019, Kiplimo and other Ugandans were some of the pacesetters who helped Kenyan marathon king Eliud Kipchoge run the Ineos Marathon in Vienna in 1:59.40 hours. They reaped millions of shillings.

Pacesetters in athletics can be equated to sparring partners in boxing. But Teddy Nakimuli and Yusuf Nkobeza went home empty-handed after a month sparring with the Olympics-bound boxers.
No wonder that Kiplimo, at just 20, is billed by Forbes to have a net worth of $1.5m (Shs5b), while Ssemujju, 28, who has boxed for 10 years, feeds on painting gigs, as he earns nothing for the pain he suffers in the gym and the ring.

“I don’t regret the decision I took because at times you need to change a place for greener pastures,” boxer Nassir Bashir, who stayed in Australia after the 2018 Commonwealth Games, recently told SportsNation.
“Life is steadily improving, I got a good job that pays me well and I feel grateful.”
Bashir added that he got a total of Shs10m in allowances for representing Uganda at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the 2018 edition in Gold Coast.

“That taught me a lesson that even if I fight till death while in Uganda I won’t change my life financially,” he said.
“We sweat, we give all we can to lift the Ugandan flag high as sportsmen and at the end of the day government officials sign for allowances and give us peanuts which left me with no option.”

Bashir’s story echoes that of all Ugandan athletes: boxers, bodybuilders, weightlifters, netballers, table tennis players – who disappeared abroad.
Across the world, even in the US, the land of opportunities, weightlifting is not a lucrative sport per se. But although Julis Ssekitoleko denies on record, colleagues say they can’t blame him for attempting to seek greener pastures.

Like many, he would not mind a car washing gig, manning security at bars, or mopping supermarket floors, among others, if it gives him, his peasant mother and pregnant girlfriend in Kampala a better life.
Renowned boxer Badru Lusambya did those menial jobs during his intermittent stays in the UK, as he waited for professional fights.

Greed vs. need
At the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, about 20 Kenya-born athletes competed against their Kenyan counterparts.
Ruth Jebet, who won the women’s 3000m steeplechase gold – Bahrain’s first Olympic gold – was born and bred in Kenya. She switched her allegiance to the Middle East state in 2013, the same year Paul Chelimo, another Kenyan, became an American runner.
Chelimo finished third behind Cheptegei in the 5000m at the Tokyo Games, having won silver at Rio 2016.

Winfred Yavi, who competed with Chemutai for the 3000m steeplechase title in Tokyo, renounced her Kenyan nationality for Bahrain at the age of 15.
For long, unlike sports like football, track and field athletes were allowed to switch nationalities – without necessarily disappearing – even after they had represented one country at international level.

But why didn’t Ugandan runners take up such opportunities? Nalis Bijingo, a veteran athletics coach, is proud of athletes like netballer Peace Proscovia, who go through “the right channels” to play abroad, and those who fled persecution in yesteryear but he says those who just vanish are impatient and greedy.
“Most track and field athletes are focused and patient,” he says.

Bijingo says in his heyday as a long-distance runner in the 1970s, he turned down a scholarship offer to run for a university in the US.
Nakaayi also told SCORE the “love for my country, no matter the situation” has forced her to decline invitations from several countries promising her lots of money. But she understands why others flee poverty for greener pastures in other countries.

Benjamin Njia, a Police Athletics Club coach, says Ugandan track and field athletes are generally disciplined and treasure their country.
“They believe there’s a future in running for Uganda, and resist the temptation for quick means to wealth.”

Athletes management
Sande Bashaija, a former track and field athlete and journalist, adds that most track and field athletes who represent Uganda at big events have contracts with international management companies, which assure them regular competitions and a reasonable pay.

In 2019, when Cheptegei won 10000m gold at the Worlds, the NN Running Team member grossed nearly Shs500m in prize money from different circuits, which is more than top track and field earners in US bagged in 2016, according to WireSports, without shoe deals or appearance fees – athletes’ traditional money sources.
Boxers, ruggers, bodybuilders, can only dream of a fraction of this when they live in Europe or America.

Njia adds that initially, Uganda had few runners who were guaranteed national team slots, unlike Kenyans and Ethiopians, who faced stiff competition among themselves.
It makes sense: Sifan Hassan, Kalkidan Gezahegne and Letesenbet Gidey won gold for Netherlands, silver for Bahrain and bronze for Ethiopia, respectively, in the women’s 10000m final at the Tokyo Games. But all were born and bred in Ethiopia. Had Hassan, 28, not sought asylum as a refugee in the Netherlands and Gezahegne, 30, turned down the juicy offer from Bahrain, they would probably be fighting with Gidey, 23, to represent Ethiopia.

The Dibaba sisters shone almost simultaneously for Ethiopia but many flee the competition and fall for the irresistible offers from other countries.
Not all ‘defectors’ succeed, though. Long distance runner Lily Abdullayeva, regrets dumping Ethiopia for Azerbaijan in 2009. 
“They promised me a good salary, a house and expensive cars if I won races. But I never received any,” she told the Guardian in 2017.
Even then, the exodus of African athletes to other continents was not about to end, until 2017, when World Athletics boss Sebastian Coe moved to ban the practice of athletes competing under ‘flags of convenience.’

The topic gained popularity when the International Olympic Committee cleared two athletes born in Cuba and Germany to represent Britain at the London 2012 Olympics. Even Tiffany Porter, the British team captain, was born in the US.
It was worse for Africa. “What we have is a wholesale market for African talent open to the highest bidder,” Hamad Kalkaba Malboum, the African representative on the World Athletics Council, was quoted by Reuters as saying in February 2017.

In 2018, Athletics Kenya president Jackson Tuwei threatened legal action against coaches or managers who assist athletes defect. But Nora Jeruto, another steeplechaser, is soon becoming Kazakhstan.
But the Uganda Athletics Federation has no such fears.

Of course the ban on voluntary immigration exempts those with “legitimate and genuine” reasons to switch, but Ugandan runners, most of whom attached to Police, Prisons, Wildlife Authority, face no threats that warrant asylum.
Instead, it is boxers, some of whom were detained, tortured and killed by security operatives in the recent political season, who can genuinely claim facing an existential threat at home.

Nassir Bashir, ‘deserted’ boxer
I don’t regret the decision I took because at times you need to change a place for greener pastures. Life is steadily improving, I got a good job that pays me well and I feel grateful. Even if I fight till death while in Uganda I won’t change my life financially. We sweat, we give all we can to lift the Ugandan flag high as sportsmen and at the end of the day government officials sign for allowances and give us peanuts which left me with no option.

CASH
Jacob Kiplimo, at just 20, is billed by Forbes to have a net worth of $1.5m (Shs5b), while Ssemujju, 28, who has boxed for 10 years, feeds on painting gigs, as he earns nothing for the pain he suffers in the gym and the ring. Peruth Chemutai bagged $1,500 (Shs5.3m) for finishing seventh in the women’s 3000m steeplechase at the Prefontaine Meet. But boxer Nanziri and her captain Bwogi are fading into near oblivion, probably wishing they hadn’t returned.

assemugabi@ ug.nationmedia.com