Dominic Otucet, Uganda’s golden federation president

What stands out for you from Tokyo 2020?

I have never seen such a time when the whole country is united around the team like it was this time. Coming back to Uganda with two gold medals, a silver and a bronze was the first time ever for the country. We used to go to the Olympic Games and come back with either nothing or if we are lucky we come back with one medal. Four medals was just amazing. It was our best performance ever and a great achievement. We shall continue to celebrate it.

How did you celebrate it?

Of course the celebrations were spontaneous. As we were winning from the other side, people were celebrating all over the country. For me I was connected to lots of social media and I could follow celebrations all over the country. But I believe the place that celebrated most was the Sebei sub-region because I could see a lot of people around Joshua’s [Cheptegei] house and Peruth’s [Chemutai] place. For us who were in Tokyo, every time we would win, we would get back to the apartment which was Apartment number one on Floor nine. We would congregate and just make noise, say a few speeches and appreciate each other. Ugandans in Tokyo also celebrated because the ambassador supported our team a lot.

We all knew Cheptegei would get gold, what did you think of Peruth Chemutai before the games?

I personally expected Joshua to win two gold medals. Between Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo, I expected to get four medals because they had the best times in the world in 5,000 and 10,000 metres. Then I was reliably informed by coach Peter Chelangat that Chemutai had prepared well and was material for a medal. When we were seeing them off from Uganda, I told her that first of all our ambassador in Tokyo comes from your village Tulel in Bukwo District. Of course she did not know about that. I told her to go and work hard to excite her village mate. We were two chaplains. I chose Pr Elly Muwanguzi Kironde, the lead pastor at Kingdom Love Christian Centre, which is based in the UK to go ahead of me and he reached the village before any Ugandan. He set up our prayer altar. I gave her a message to deliver to the chaplain emphasising to her that he was going to pray for her and win a medal. All along our expectations were that she would win either a bronze or silver but when she ran her semi-final, she was comfortable finishing second with the second best time overall. Then after the race she told me she was relaxed to reserve the energy for the final. From that time I told Peruth, then you are good enough for gold. She promised to work for the gold medal. Simply this is how the gold medal came out.

How did you manage the Covid-19 situation ahead of the Olympics?

We had a very difficult time preparing the team. For us as athletics, the first gold medal we won was to deliver all athletes to the Games while they were healthy. The protocols demanded that if one tested positive in a group, everyone would be quarantined for one week. That would be a disaster because most of our athletes were in Tokyo four days before the Games. A week-long quarantine would mean missing the competition. So, we had to ensure that the athletes were well prepared. We put them in groups which we called bubbles. In Kapchorwa we had two bubbles. The first was built around Joshua and the second around Kiplimo. In Kampala we had one bubble because the second relocated to Europe where we had Ronald Musagala, Halima Nakaayi and Winnie Nanyondo. When Namboole became a Covid-19 isolation centre, they had no place for training so they chose to remain in the Netherlands. We stayed with Shida Leni and we had to rent hotel accommodation for her, coach Paul Okello and the maid. What we called a bubble had athletes bound for the Olympic Games, coaches who were handling them, a physio, the cooks, administrator, cleaners and askaris. All these people were tested twice before entering the bubble. Whoever left the bubble, would not rejoin until they tested negative.  

Monitoring was easy because the organisers of the Games created two Apps to monitor the health status of the athletes. During training, we were tested twice every week. When departure was approaching, each group had to be tested daily for three days so that on the day of departure you had to present three PCR results. They would then take a screenshot of that app at the airport. Some people find taking a Covid-19 test very inconveniencing but we had no options because the boxing team already had a challenge, so we were advised to take two PCR tests in the nose and the throat.

Some athletes say this was one of the most boring Games. To many of them, the Olympics is about making new friends and connections. How was it in your opinion?

It is true that at the Olympic Games everybody who qualifies really wants to interact as much as possible. To some, winning a medal is a bonus. But in this situation, that was curtailed a bit. The principal objective was to ensure everyone’s safety. Even with all the negative tests, when one arrived in Tokyo, they were quarantined for three days. You could only interact with your teammates. After three days, you could interact with others while masked up. It was not as exciting as the previous Games. It was your life first.

Uganda has been performing well in long distances and it appears as though the field events and sprints have been ignored. How true is this?

As a federation we have not ignored any events. As a matter of fact, Uganda used to perform better in sprints and field events in the early days of 60s and 70s. Our first gold medal at the Olympics was in a field event in 400m hurdles by the late John Akii Bua. Those are the days when we had the likes of Jackson Arop, who was even the African record holder in javelin and set the national record that stood for a very long time. But along the way, the western world and the Caribbean came up strongly in the sprints and the western world dominated the field events. These events are very technical and we were outcompeted. We saw that we had an opportunity cost in long distances and it paid off. We first entered into cross country and for several years we used to win bronze medals or team events. We could not go to world cross country events and come back empty handed. That input of cross country introduced us to middle and long distance running. We had two turning points, starting with Davis Kamoga when he won a bronze medal in the Olympic Games and a silver in 400 medals.

Our turning point came in 2000 when Dorcus Inzikuru went to Santiago, Chile and won a gold medal as a junior in 5000-metres. Then 2005 with the inaugural steeplechase in Helsinki, Finland when Inzikuru won gold which was our first at the World Championships. That inspired some athletes. In 2006 we went to the Melbourne Commonwealth Games where Inzikuru again won gold in the steeplechase. Boniface Kiprop won the other gold medal in the 10,000 metres. That is the time we realised we could do something in distance running. The big moment arrived in 2012 at the London Olympics where Stephen Kiprotich won the gold medal. That inspired the likes of Kiplimo and his colleagues. Moses Kipsiro inspired some with his double gold in the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games. In the area of sprints, we lag behind but we have also tried to uplift the events. Our biggest challenge in the past was the lack of an electronic timer but we got a donation from Germany which eased the situation. Previously, distance athletes could qualify by hand times but sprints, it had to be strictly electronic timing. We tried uplifting field events as we held a training at Pece Stadium in Gulu for coaches drawn from primary schools. The training focused on jumps. In 2010, we won a gold medal through Sarah Nambawa in the African Games in Nairobi. What we need to put in place now is the follow-up. For the throws, Justine Lalam won a gold medal in Bahamas Commonwealth Youth Games. We talked with the regional headquarters and they wanted her to go and train with Julius Yego in Nairobi. But we had wanted Victoria Awidi and Lucy Aber to join her and it did not work out. We are mindful and want our sport to be comprehensive. But at a lower level, when we went for Africa Zone 5 in Kigali, most of the gold medals we won were actually in the sprint events.

This is a technical sport without elite coaches, strategically what are you doing?

We have coaches but it also requires coaches whom we would have control over because as a federation we don’t employ coaches. We borrow these coaches from the clubs. Yet most of the clubs have coaches for middle and long distance events. We have a few coaches focused on sprints. In Kampala, we have Paul Okello whose base is Namboole. Then we have Faustino Kiwa at Makerere University. They are helping us improve the number of sprinters in Uganda with better times. I still think we have a lot of work to do in this area.

You are heading a ‘golden sport’ yet this is a sport without facilities. What is the plan?

In Kololo, when we had the state reception, I had prepared a speech but I was instead asked to give the opening prayer. Nonetheless I requested the protocols to pass on my planned speech to the First Lady and His Excellency, the President. In that speech I highlighted the challenge of facilities. Teryet (Kiprotich) High altitude Training Centre in Kapchorwa has been built for too long. When we came back from London in 2012, His Excellency directed that it should be built in two years. Nine years along the road it is not yet ready! I don’t really know what went wrong but I did mention that the government should expedite the completion of Teryet.  

I also requested the government to facilitate our access to Namboole so that we are able to prepare athletes for a big season next year where we have World Championships and Commonwealth Games. We need a tartan track urgently for that reason. I still request the government to upgrade some of the regional stadia to tartan level such that we have alternative areas for training. Now that Namboole is locked up, we could be using Pece, Akii Bua or Buhinga. Government should also facilitate us to build our own offices. We are a very big sport, yet we are squatters. It is not fair for us! I also reminded the president to fulfil some of the pledges that have remained unfulfilled. One of them is a big bus to the federation, a 64-seater. We have become so big for the Coaster we have. We need a Double Cabin pick-up for administration because sometimes we have had to drive two or three people from Kapchorwa in the bus. I think that is wasteful. The other pledge is to the athletes. He promised cars to Halima Nakaayi, Dorcus Inzikuru, and then houses to Nakaayi, Cheptegei and Kiprotich. I still want to call upon the government to secure sports grounds. We have seen how sport can market the nation. But if sports grounds become commercial centres, how will it market the country?

Talking about the rewards system where the President gives out cars and houses, how sustainable is that?

It’s not sustainable at all. We think when the government puts a policy, it becomes quite easy to know what one gets when they excel. It is more sustainable if one is given a one-off. But this stipend from State House which the President said is monthly, in reality it does not come monthly. People in State House have been paying it quarterly. The problem we now have is that as athletics, the number of people who qualify for the stipend has grown. The last time we communicated to State House in 2018, we had a list of 64 athletes.

How best can the government facilitate training of the athletes?

The best way is to have training facilities. But if you are preparing for the Games, the best the government can do is to provide funding much earlier to facilitate the training camps. The longer you keep the athletes in camp, the better the performance.  I remember before we went to Gold Coast in 2018, we decided to enter camp much earlier and all preparations were easy qualification. It is an opportunity to qualify more athletes. The challenge we have had before is that money comes at the last moment. This therefore, only facilitates you to take the team out. For the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, 80 per cent of the money we used to prepare the teams came from the government. The other money came from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Talking about local competitions, most of the people who qualify hit the times abroad. What does this have to say about the relevance of local competitions?

Before you are given a chance to go to an international competition, we see you here at home. Even the international managers pick these athletes from the local competitions. Our local results are very significant. Once you perform well here, you may not have hit the qualifying time at our altitude with limited competition, when you are taken to compete with the best of the best in the world, for sure, your times will improve. The baseline is local competitions everywhere in the world.

What is next for athletics?

Right now we are focusing on the World Championships in Oregon in July and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. We also have the World Cross Country championships. Our elite athletes have started preparing. This time, their offseason is very short. Some took one week and resumed training. To keep in shape, we are preparing for road races in Kampala around the time we normally have the MTN Kampala Marathon which has been suspended because of Covid-19. We plan to have an elite race. As we enter January, we shall have the national cross country too.

How has Uganda managed to keep itself free from doping?

We always talk to our athletes not to be drawn into food supplements because they have let down some people. We tell our athletes that our country is endowed with a variety of foods which they can depend on to avoid the risk. Deliberately, we have training programmes against doping by the Uganda Olympic Committee (UOC) in Kapchorwa and Namboole. For elite athletes, we have doctors who recommend the medication when they are going for treatment. Dr Martin Chebet, who is based in Mbale has to be informed all the time about the medication in that region. In Kampala, we have assistance from UOC.  

Do you test?

The testing is done by World athletes all the time in competitions and outside competitions. Outside competition, we are obliged to give them the athlete’s whereabouts on training. If the officials from WADA [World Anti-Doping Agency] drop in, they must know where the athlete is. They normally come unannounced. Luckily, Uganda is rated in category B. The countries at the highest risk are in category A. Before we went for the Olympic Games, we had to come up with a long list which had more than 40 athletes and they were all tested.