WHAT OTHERS SAY: The real winners never run the races

Kenyan athletes dominated this year’s London Marathon that was run on the weekend, with Eliud Kipchoge winning his third title, while Vivian Cheruiyot won the women’s race.

More than a day later #LondonMarathon was still the top trending Kenya topic on Twitter, as Kipchoge and Cheruiyot were hailed, and Somali-Briton Mo Farah’s unsuccessful attempt to pull off an upset was mocked. However, he notched up a British marathon record.

It was a very lucrative hunting day for the athletes, with Kipchoge winning $55,000 (Sh121 million) for his labours, and topping it with a rich bonus of $100,000 (Sh220 million) for crossing the finishing line in a sub-2:05:00 time.

Cheruiyot, for her part, picked up the $55,000 (Sh121 million) winner’s cheque, and a bonus of $75,000 (Sh165 million) for recording a sub 2:20:00 time.

There is no honest day’s labour in Kenya and its neighbourhood that would pay any man or woman anywhere near that kind of money. In fact, it’s not easy either to steal that kind of money in a day.

The one question that never gets asked, as Kenyans and Ethiopians, the occasional Ugandan, Moroccan, Eritrean and other Africans go around the world winning these big moneys, is “why do they keep putting up these prizes for us to win?”

Part of the answer is to be found in the fact that since these races are watched by so many far away, they trend on social media. Because “our people” are running, and we are all watching, we create the massive number of eyeballs that TV broadcasters sell to advertisers. For the advertisers, it is a huge global audience to market to. And for the cities that hold the marathons, it’s big business.

So athletes like Kipchoge and Cheruiyot are not the winners. They are the product. The prize money they get is just change.

The same thing can be seen, perhaps even more dramatically, in the (English) Premier League. Last week we learnt that Premier League clubs reported record revenues of £4.5bn in the 2016-17 season, and also returned to profit. Most dramatically, ALL the 20 clubs in the league made a profit.

One of the sources of the success of the Premier League is how well it has opened up to foreign players, and exploited that to drive the fan base and business. There are sports programmes dedicated to African players in the Premier League, as well as a BBC football prize to boot. A creature arriving from outer space would be forgiven for thinking the Premier League is an African league if it followed the sport through only African social media and sports media.

One of the most historically-engaging sports one can follow on TV is the gruelling Tour de France, considered the mother of all bicycle races. In the three weeks over which it is run, as it weaves through countryside, small and big towns, it is a constant flood of the histories and stories of the mountains, hills, small and big houses, museums, churches, rivers, gardens near where the race passes going back hundreds of years, and told with quite some colour.

It’s impressive. You cannot follow the Tour de France then wonder why for many years France has been the most visited country in the world.

You watch the London, New York, Berlin, Boston and other marathons, and no effort is spared in spinning the tourist sites. There would probably be less disruption running these marathons in the docks and industrial districts, but no. There are no 750 year-old churches, or art galleries there.

It seems, then, that while there is are rich pickings in winning marathons and other sports, the really big bucks are in holding them. Sports is too serious a business to be left to sportsmen and women.

Consider this. A sports fan in South Africa with money in their pocket watched and was awed by Kipchoge’s impressive win on the weekend. Later in the year, he is planning his holiday, and is given two choices based on his experience of the London marathon – to go and visit Kipchoge’s farm in the Rift Valley (which he wasn’t told about), or Windsor castle, from where the Queen pushed the start button to for the race (and was much gushed about).

Where do you think he will go?