Cheptegei is our Usain Bolt, but we may be forgetting

It is a well-documented adage in sport that winning is not the hardest thing to do, staying at the top is. Winning repeatedly and proving that the first victory was no fluke is what separates one-time wonders from legitimate all-time greats.

Muhammad Ali dominated boxing for a decade, Michael Jordan owned basketball for a decade – an argument can be made that he still does - and Usain Bolt captured the hearts of fans throughout the world in eight years of inimitable brilliance. The same is true for cricket genius Sachin Tendulkar, tennis maestro Roger Federer and golf’s GOAT Tiger Woods.

From a purely Ugandan perspective, until recently the country had never been blessed with a superstar who commanded the sort of global adulation the aforementioned names command. Even in death, like Ali who died seven years ago but he remains the gold standard of the sweet science, their accomplishments and legacies continue to flourish.   

Today the Pearl of Africa has its own Ali in Joshua Cheptegei. The latter is Uganda’s equivalent of Jordan, Tendulkar, Federer, Woods and Michael Phelps. Because we have largely been starved of success at international level, we have not contextualized the magnitude of the achievements of the kid from Kapchorwa. We just don’t know what we have in Cheptegei. Which is quite sad.

This week, he sealed a hattrick of 10000m gold medals at the IAAF World Championships to join an exclusive list of long-distance runners to have managed the feat. But Cheptegei is not just a triple world champion; he has scaled every height there is in long-distance running.

He is the world record holder over the 5000 and 10000m. Legends before him like Kenenisa Bekele, Paul Tergat, Mo Farah and Haile Gebrselassie belong to the Mount Rushmore of world athletics. Yet Cheptegei is comfortably their equal. And if you factor in his world records, he has something over them.

Ugandans need to be reminded that their country has perhaps the greatest long-distance athlete there has ever been. Being a country with short memories, this detail is lost on most. His gold medal haul is as rich as Usain Bolt’s and Carl Lewis and Bekele and all greats of this or any other era.

On Tuesday morning when Cheptegei’s latest victory was being discussed on BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, Sky News and Fox Sports among several major news television channels and stations, the story was not the lead in the Ugandan dailies. Instead, there was a story of businessman Patrick Bitature being ordered to pay some billions by an international court.

What is clear here is that we have either not grasped the magnitude of what Cheptegei is doing or we have chosen to take for granted his gold medal-winning feats.

The short memories have forgotten that not so long ago the country survived for decades reminiscing John Akii-Bua’s 1972 400m hurdle gold at the Munich Olympics.

I was privileged to be in London some 11 years ago when Stephen Kiprotich relieved Akii-Bua’s (RIP) soul of that burden to turn a new page for athletics in Uganda, and globally. The marathon was the final event of the 2012 Olympics, which meant that Uganda’s anthem was the last anthem to be played at London Olympic Stadium in Stratford thanks to Kiprotich’s marathon heroics.

Today the Ugandan anthem is almost routine at all major athletics Championships because of Cheptegei. The boy has turned winning into an artform, and the biggest mistake we can make is to assume that we have a divine right as a country to be appearing with gold medals at every major event.

Cheptegei has not tired himself from winning; why must we tire ourselves from giving him his due prominence?

Sorry Patrick Bitature but that headline story, through no fault of yours, did a disservice to Cheptegei. Ugandans across the political divide, religions and tribes all basked in the glory of Cheptegei's gold, like they always have.

Stories of Bitature’s nature, which are divisive many times, are commonplace in print media. The ones of Cheptegei’s irresistible magnificence are a rarity. Denying them prominence is to do the boy and the country a disservice.  Tomorrow, which is sooner rather than you think, we may look back and wish we had done more for a once-in-a-lifetime talent.    

The writer is a sports commentator and member of the Uganda Olympic Committee Media Commission