Unlike the more glorified test of man and machine (such as Formula One), rally racing has for decades been relegated to an inferior position in the hierarchy of tests of endurance. Yet this demanding sport actually predates F1; finding its roots in 1894 when horseless cart races dominated the city of Paris. Monte Carlo was the scene for the first official rally in 1911 and soon, city-to-city road races sprang up across France and Europe.
These races gave birth to those elements we still enjoy in modern rallying, such as time trials and the use of road books and route notes. Drivers had to weave between pedestrians and animals while covering distances as great as 1,178km—sometimes without any rest periods in between. Safety naturally became an issue, as the clunky vehicles got increasingly faster along those inhospitable tracks. The sport was banned in France for a brief period but soon, purpose-built tracks were developed and the sport came into its own.
A name we now associate with two-wheeled competitions, the Tour de France, began originally for rally drivers and kicked off in 1899. The most famous of all rallying competitions began decades later in 1977. Thierry Sabine was travelling through the Libyan desert on his motorbike when he got lost. Struck by the austerity and beauty of the landscape, he vowed to share his discovery with as many people as possible when he finally made it back to France.
Sabine mapped out a 10,000km route from Europe into Algiers, across Agadez and finishing in Dakar. To mark the birth of the Paris-Dakar rally, he coined the following motto: “A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind.”  But this competition became a nightmare for 58 competitors who, since the inception of the challenge, lost their lives in pursuit of glory. One of South Africa’s most renowned Paris-Dakar competitors, Alfie Cox (who’d made the transition from bikes to cars), narrowly escaped death in January this year when his Volvo XC60 suffered power-steering failure. The car burst into flames and both Cox and his co-driver, Jürgen Schröder, had to be airlifted from the scene. Unforgiving terrain and mechanical difficulties are not the only threats to competitor safety. The rally had to be cancelled in 2008 due to security issues in Mauritania and the competition shifted to South America in 2009. It has stayed there ever since.
Thanks to its challenging conditions, Africa has hosted some other, perhaps lesser-known events, such as the FIA African Rally Championships (which takes place in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Madagascar), the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic, and the colloquially-termed Put Foot Rally.
Legend has it that the East African Safari Classic grew out of a conversation motorsport enthusiast Neil Vincent had with his cousin Eric Cecil. Vincent is attributed with saying: “I can imagine nothing more boring than driving round and round the same piece of track. But if you will organize an event where we can get into our cars, slam the door, go halfway across Africa and back, and the first car home is a winner, I’ll be in it.” In 1953, the competition took off under the guise of a tribute to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Put Foot Rally, unlike all the rest, emphasizes the social element rather than competition. It is aimed at bringing attention to tourism in South Africa and an appreciation for the wildlife and natural beauty that make up this fair land. But ultimately, rallying is about rivalry and economics—it’s a proving ground where manufacturers test their latest technology (which we as consumers benefit from). These competitions also generate financial rewards for the local areas hosting them.
Take the Toyota Kalahari Botswana 1000 Desert Race for example, which takes place on June 22-24 every year. Since 1975, this has been considered the ‘Comrades Marathon’ of all off-road events. At the launch of this year’s race, Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, Botswana’s minister for environment, wildlife and tourism, mentioned that the rally contributed “millions of pula” to their country’s economy with the bulk of the money being spent on food, transport, accommodation, entertainment and petrol. Businesses in the vicinity of the race route also mentioned increased sales during the annual event.
The technology required to build a car that’s capable of taking on extreme terrain is simply astonishing and begins with a frame that’s not only lightweight but capable of withstanding severe punishment. The frame doubles up as a roll cage and, according to FIA regulations, needs to be able to withstand up to 16.9 tons for a defined area. Driver and passenger safety of road-going cars has enjoyed many benefits, all as a direct result of the conditions experienced in rally (and other forms of) racing.
Keeping these cars in contact with the roads—where there is one—is the job of the suspension, yet this needs to allow enough ground clearance (spring travel is limited to 250mm) while still maintaining stability. Production cars make use of these developments, but naturally the emphasis here isn’t only on performance but also on ensuring comfort levels as well.
Four-wheel drive is crucial in rallying, yet the Paris-Dakar regulations stipulate that any form of electronic control is prohibited. As a result, manufacturers often opt for viscous locking for the car’s three differentials. One might think that, as these cars can’t travel as fast as their road-going counterparts, aerodynamics wouldn’t be a major factor—it actually is. A rally vehicle’s drag coefficient enjoys the highest priority in the design phase (which is obviously of great importance for road-going cars; ensuring high levels of fuel efficiency), all the while taking into account the need for short overhangs that allow easy entry angles when climbing over hills or obstructions.
Creating downforce, unlike in Formula One, is not a necessity as sand has high rolling resistance. In terms of bodywork, the carbon fiber shell on the 2012 Volkswagen Race Touareg for example, weighs in at a measly 50kg. Carbon fiber has now been extensively used in production cars where performance is key and many modern vehicles now make use of engines machined from lightweight yet durable aluminum.
Weight distribution in terrain that can easily flip a car demands serious attention. Typically, an equal weight distribution is placed over the front and rear axles and fuel tanks are placed very low to assist with an optimal center of gravity. While packing components in as compact a manner as possible, mechanics need to have ease of access to exchange parts or service the cars quickly. Support teams also need to carry as few spares as possible so they can be mobile and efficient.
Tire development goes hand-in-hand with racing and again, translates directly into the types of compounds available for production vehicles. Tires need to be capable of handling rough terrain, while offering resistance to wear-and-tear.
Stopping a standard 4&#215;4 has become easier thanks to the testing that goes on in rally races, which is why disc brakes have become an industry standard rather than the antiquated drum configuration. Thanks to these brave drivers and manufacturers, road-going cars have become exponentially safer and far more capable and will continue to do so in the future.

Pushing The Limits  Of Endurance

It was a long journey for many on a sunny afternoon to the district of Laikipia, on the Equator, tucked away in the shadow of Mount Kenya.
Many had journeyed 200 kilometers from Nairobi to catch a glimpse of Africa’s richest footballer.
The longest journey of all was undertaken by Samuel Eto’o, who had flown from Moscow.
Eto’o leads a strange life in Russia amid vast wealth, unrest and racism. He scored 13 goals in 23 games for Anzhi Makhachkala, a team in Dagestan on the western shores of the Caspian Sea, close to the borders of Georgia and Azerbaijan. It is also a club slap–bang in the middle of Islamic insurgency. The region is considered so dangerous that Eto’o and his teammates have to train at a camp outside Moscow and fly more than 1,200 kilometers, 15 times-a-season, for home games.
On this warm afternoon in Laikipia, in the Kenyan highlands, there was no danger, merely adulation. More than 10,000 people crammed into the tiny football ground, with its two small stands, for the final of the Laikipia Unity Cup, where Eto’o was to make a symbolic kick-off.
The crowd was loud and jubilant. You could probably have heard the roar on the slopes of Mount Kenya. Thousands cheered and blew vuvuzelas as Eto’o, flanked by soldiers and the police commissioner, strode to the center-circle through a guard of honor made by players from nearby football clubs. It was a rare sight these days–one of the highest-paid athletes on the planet, in jeans and a T-shirt, mixing with the people as if he was about to lace up his boots and play.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-large wp-image-947" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Forbes.Africa-Samuel.Etoo-9-683x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="711" />
The Cameroonian was in Kenya to promote conservation and environmental issues, but this trip to Laikipia sparked the idea of opening a football academy in the district. It would be the third in Africa after those he opened through the Eto’o Foundation in Gabon and Cameroon.
“I was driving back to the hotel when this crazy but beautiful idea crossed my mind. I hoped those who would attend the academy would take advantage of the opportunity. I want them to be better than me.”
Thirty-one-year-old Eto’o is the only man to win African Player of the Year four times. He earns $28.8 million a year. His club, Anzhi Makhachkala, is owned by a man who can afford him: Russian billionaire, Suleyman Kerimov. He is the 146th richest man in the world, according to Forbes, worth $6.5 billion. Kerimov, who was born and bred in Dagestan, owns stakes in everything
from long-distance telephone lines to Russia’s largest
gold mine.
The money may be good in Europe, but all too often the racism is bad, even though the authorities are trying to stamp it out. Eto’o has been in the thick of it. Once, while playing for Barcelona, he threatened to walk off the pitch as Real Zaragoza fans chanted racial insults at him. In March 2011, hooligans threw bananas—a crude expression of racism—at Eto’o’s fellow player and former Brazilian captain, Roberto Carlos. Russia, the host of the FIFA World Cup in 2018, is alleged to suffer from severe racism in football.
“Racism is everywhere and football is only a reflection of our society,” he says.
“Racism is about ignorance and nothing else. It’s not that hard to change a racist mind; all you need to do is to educate them,” says the striker.
The face of European soccer is changing fast. Almost all top European football clubs have an African playing for them. The success of the likes of Eto’o and Didier Drogba—who played a pivotal role in getting Chelsea the first-ever European Champions League trophy in May—is attracting more African football youth to Europe.
“A lot of youth have immigrated to Europe because they are looking for better opportunities. I actually want them to stay here in Africa so that they can build the continent,” he says.
Eto’o has a plan beyond football. The football academy he intends to build in Kenya will also focus on educating the youth on a number of subjects, particularly learning English.
“Football has given me everything and I would like to give back some of the things I got through football. That’s why I’m investing back into football in Africa.”
On the question of whether he will remain as one of the top-paid African players in the world, Eto’o was quick to detach football from money.
“Football is not about money, it’s about talent. My objective is to nurture the next generation of footballers so that this trend keeps on continuing. That’s one of the reasons why I am investing in football academies—so that the next generation can be as talented as ours.”
Eto’o’s contract with Anzhi comes to an end in 2014 and the Cameroonian skipper has planned his retirement. He has a number of projects that will keep him busy for years to come and a campaign against racism that is likely to take a lifetime.

A Crazy And Beautiful Idea  From Russia With Love

Throughout my career, Nelson Mandela, was a long-distance motivator for me. Whilst enduring the challenges that come with living in Europe, with a darker complexion, my mind constantly reminded me that there was a man in South Africa that had endured and was still enduring much greater challenges. The great man inspired me to hold my head up high and forge ahead. He makes me proud to be an African.
In Zambia during my youth, the African National Congress (ANC) was always talked about in a very hush-hush manner. I don’t think as children, our parents wanted us to know much about all the brave men and women exiled in our country. When it came to Nelson Mandela, great tales were told: how this man that was put in jail for his fight against the brutality of apartheid; for the right to be treated as a human being; for the right to be free. We didn’t have a picture of him, we hardly knew what he looked like, but we all knew of his courage and determination. He was our hero.
In Belgium and Holland in the late 1980s and early 90s there was much debate about apartheid in South Africa. Holland, in particular, was a melting pot of activists. It was in 1987 when my Dutch colleague, Ruud Gullit won ‘World Footballer of the year’ and dedicated his award to Nelson Mandela that I realized, my hero was a world hero and that there were other people in the world that truly cared for justice and democracy.
I was 28 when he was released in February 1990 after 27 years and I realized that he had been in jail for almost as long as I’d been alive! What a tragedy, I thought with anger. Yet when he came out of jail, he spoke of peace and harmony, without any bitterness or animosity towards his captors. He rose above the hardship and suffering and triumphed as a human being. He is an example to humankind that good overcomes evil—a victory we Africans were proud of; a victory that was an example to the world.
My career later took me to Mexico, where racism was a foreign concept to the friendly Central American country. I got a call from South Africa inviting me to play in the ‘Nelson Mandela Farewell game’—African XI vs. World All Stars XI—in honor of the great man who was about to step down as president. That weekend, I travelled for two days for thousands of kilometers by bus to an away game in Mexico. I arrived back in Mexico City at 8am, only to jump on a plane to South Africa. My trip took me from Mexico City to Paris and on to Johannesburg. I arrived in South Africa on the morning of the game. There was so much excitement, that fatigue was forgotten.
That day we were invited to have lunch at the Sandton Sun and Nelson Mandela arrived to meet us. Each and every one of us was dumbstruck by his presence. I remember one thing in particular: we had lunch, and I was with Jorge Campos and Claudio Suárez from Mexico. They were playing for the world team. When we went to greet the man himself, we asked one of the waiters to take our picture, which he did. On returning to Mexico we found that the picture he had taken was blurred. The waiter must have been shivering because the great Nelson Mandela was in the frame that it was completely out of focus.
This farewell match for the president of South Africa took place on August 17, 1999.  Coaching the World XI team was England coach, Roy Hodgson, and his team included:   Dunga; Christian Karembeu; Thomas Hassler and Hidetoshi Nakata to mention a few. Our African XI, coached by Jomo Sono, consisted of: Lucas Radebe; Doctor Khumalo; Mark Fish; and Phil Masinga. A great line-up for a great leader before 40,000 people at the Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg. I scored two goals in that match with the second goal in the 89th minute of the game. The final score was 2-2.
During the line-up I clearly remember feeling intense emotions on shaking his hand. I could ‘feel’ his greatness. I was humbled to be in his presence. For me, this was not just a football match, but a significant moment in my life, for me this great man epitomized what football should stand for: determination, courage, sacrifice, loyalty, forgiveness, goodwill and fairplay.
<div id="attachment_942" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942" class="size-large wp-image-942" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/TL_586712-1024x668.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="309" />Kalusha Bwalya celebrates scoring the first goal. Mandela Farewell , 17 August 1999 , Ellis Park. Mandela XI 2 v FIFA World Stars 2 Photo Credit:©Duif du Toit/Gallo Images</div>
<div id="attachment_943" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-943" class="size-large wp-image-943" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/AV_00020236-687x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="707" />JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA &#8211; AUGUST 17: Neslon Mandela before the start of the Mandela XI 2 versus FIFA World Stars 2 match at Ellis Park on August 17, 1999 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Karel Prinsloo)</div>
I met him again, in Zurich in 2003, when we all waited anxiously for the announcement of the host of the 2010 World Cup, to which I was an ambassador. We shook hands and he commented that he knew me well and was my fan. I was bowled over by his humility and kindness. He was my fan? I was privileged to be one of the 16 people that were called in to make representation to FIFA on why this prestigious event should be hosted in South Africa. I felt very proud to be in the same room as Mandela, I believe that his presence was what ultimately swung the decision in our favor when South Africa was chosen as the host country.
I have read many books about Madiba but one of my favourite quotes is “There is no passion to be found playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” There is such motivation in those words, they are so wise and so very true.
I was honored to once again be able to take part—after nearly a decade—in another match to honor this extraordinary man. It showcased some of the best players in the world from the past and present including the likes of Abedi Pele, Doctor Khumalo, George Weah, Samuel Eto’o, Daniel Amokachi, Ruud Gullit Christian Karembeuand Lucas Radebe to mention a few. We played in Cape Town on July 18, 2007 in a gala prelude to celebrate the great man’s 89th birthday. The game united the global football family in a ‘90 Minutes for Mandela’ tribute. It commemorated the man who was instrumental in the decision to bring the FIFA World Cup to Africa for the first time in 2010.
In my leadership roles, as coach and administrator, I try to live by another one of Nelson Mandela’s quotes: “It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.” It is words like these, his wisdom and his largeness of spirit that make him an everlasting icon. He dedicated his lifetime to the promotion of human rights and democracy.
This great man has been my motivator throughout my career, albeit from a distance, he was with me all the way. His values in life are exemplary and deserve to be emulated. He remains, my hero and a bastion of hope for Africa and for the entire world.

How Nelson Mandela  Won The World Cup

It has been a lonely few months in Mozambique. In the dim dawn, before the sun grips the rugged streets of Maputo, Juliano Maquina, runs in the hope of Olympic glory.
In many ways Maquina feels left behind, the last man standing. He is the only Olympic athlete who has trained in the meagre gyms of Mozambique–while his compatriots tone up in well-heeled countries around the world. If he can fight to become the last man standing in London, it would all have been worth it and could boost boxing in the land of his birth.
Maquina is the first boxer from Mozambique to qualify for the Olympics for nearly 20 years. He weighs 49kgs and will fight in the light-flyweight division.
The fight for Maquina began long ago. Every morning, six days-a-week, he trains in a basketball court in Maputo with no ring, no ropes, not even a punch bag–the lot of a sport starved of cash. Against the odds, the boxer with the baby face stays fit and tries to improve his technique ahead of being thrown to the finest young fighters in the world.
<div id="attachment_939" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-939" class="wp-image-939 size-large" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/lucas_sinoia_20120516_19-1024x681.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="315" />Lucas Sinoia</div>
“My dream is to make it to three Olympics and three world championships and take silver in two of them. My family have supported me and I hope that a successful boxing career will provide for them,” says Maquina.
At the very least, the 18-year-old southpaw has time on his side and clearly the stomach for a fight. Maquina had to battle hard at the qualifiers in Morocco to make it to the Olympics. Three boxers fought for Mozambique, Maquina was the only one to qualify in Casablanca; by contrast Angola sent six boxers, none qualified; South Africa sent nine, two qualified. One hundred and fifty four boxers competed from 30 African countries.
Maquina also has a good man in his corner, Lucas Sinoia, who fought twice for Mozambique at the Olympics.
Sinoia, aged 45, was born in the rural Mutarara Province in Tete in the remote north-western corner of Mozambique, and fought at 67kgs in the welterweight division. He was the champion of Mozambique between 1985 and 1996 and worked in a bread factory, to keep boxing, because the pay was so poor.
The answer to penury came from the barracks. Sinoia joined the army, which gave him the money and facilities to train. The army has long been a cradle of the sweet science. Legend has it that Mozambique’s first president, Samora Machel, used to punch sandbags for fun, on visits to his troops and was ringside at the big fights.
Sinoia thrived in the army and won a bucket load of medals leading to his qualification for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, as the youngest member of the national team, aged 22. He lost in the second round of the welterweight tournament to Spaniard, Javier Martínez, after getting a bye in the first. Robert Wangila, of Kenya, won the gold–the first Kenyan to win gold for his country in a sport other than athletics. Wangila, who fought 22 professional fights, died, aged just 26, from his injuries after a severe beating in the ring in Las Vegas in 1994.
Sinoia also qualified for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta where he built his reputation as a highly disciplined boxer.
The glory days in Atlanta were few, as Sinoia was beaten 11-6 in the first round by, Vadim Mezga, of Belarus. He retired in 1998.
Nearly 20 years, later Sinoia has put his own money up to start the Academia de Boxe Lucas Sinoia, in Maputo, where he coaches aspiring boxers, as young as eight. He is looking for the next heavyweight sensation, but has spent the last few months training the young Maquina.
“I have great hopes for Juliano, but fear that he will have a hard time. Apart from a small trip to Cuba and to Morocco for the qualifiers, he has no other international experience,” says Sinoia.
Together with trainer Braulio Montiel, from Cuba, Sinoia shares the job of coaching the national boxing team.
The Cuban connection is an old and powerful one. It began when Joao Caldeira, a businessman and President of the Mozambique Boxing Federation, went to teach Portuguese in Cuba in 1978. He stayed for five years and arranged for three Mozambicans, including Sinoia, to be trained in the Caribbean country which produced Olympic gold medallists such as the late Teofilo Stevenson. All three returned to become Mozambican champions.
The Cuban dash in the ring appears to be rubbing off on the young Maquina. He says his role model is the former Olympic gold medallist featherweight, Yuriorkis Gamboa, who is now unbeaten in 21 professional fights.
Sinoia and Monteil want to concentrate the meagre money, given by government to boxing in Mozambique, on training a small group of determined and talented fighters. They are looking to business for money to help the impoverished sport that could bring medals.
A successful international boxer could help coax this money from companies and revive what was once a glory game in Mozambique and a way out of poverty for many of the country’s poor.
In the 1960s and 70s, boxing pulled huge crowds and money in Mozambique. The hotbed of boxing with the seaside town of Beira and thousands took trains from all over Mozambique, as well as South Africa and Zimbabwe, for the big fights.
Money flowed through Mozambican boxing. The bets were big and boxers from across southern Africa travelled to reap the rewards of the ring.
These days of money and thunder may be a far cry from the quiet build up to the Olympics, on a shoestring, for Maquina, but there is hope. Already the victory in Casablanca has been hailed for putting Mozambique back on the boxing map.
Maybe the slender teenager, with the baby face and the sneaky jab, could stun the world in London. After all, the oldest saying in the history of boxing is the bigger they are the harder they fall.

The Lonely Last Man Standing

Heavyweight boxers David Haye and Dereck Chisora have been trying to get at each other for weeks now—on July 14, they will get their chance at West Ham’s Upton Park football ground in London. A crowd of 40,000 is expected, the biggest in Britain since Ricky Hatton beat Juan Lazcano in May 2008.
Both fighters will be unlicensed and angry; neither will earn any boxing ranking points from the fight—merely the grim satisfaction of winning what promises to resemble a street brawl. The British Board of Boxing Control has banned Chisora from fighting; Haye’s license has expired.
The first round of this street brawl was fought out on television, before a bewildered boxing world, at a press conference following Chisora’s loss to Vitali Klitschko for the World Boxing Council heavyweight title, in February at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany.
Was it real or staged? Many wondered. What is clear is that the two British boxers don’t like each other and it all boiled over in Munich.
It was the stuff the tabloids dream of. The Klitschkos’ manager, Bernd Boente, announced that no more British boxers would be given the right to challenge the world heavyweight champions, Vitali and Wladimir. This was a reaction to Chisora’s unbecoming behavior—to say the
least—before the fight.
First, Chisora slapped Vitali at the weigh-in. Then he spat on his younger brother, Wladimir, just before the fight.
After the fight it got worse. Haye, who had lost to Wladimir a few months earlier, was in the crowd of journalists at the post-fight conference. He objected to Boente’s statement about British boxers and demanded a rematch.
Sensing that Haye was stealing the show, Chisora responded by charging off the stage to attack Haye, verbally and physically. A brawl ensued amid the chaos of tumbling journalists, cameras and flying fists; Haye swung a camera tripod at Chisora. In the confusion, Chisora claimed he was glassed and said that he would either shoot Haye or hunt him down, or both. The German authorities detained 28-year-old Chisora and the British Board of Boxing Control banned him.
Chisora’s father, Paul, a contracts manager at a fireplace manufacturing company in Harare, was quoted in the Zimbabwean newspapers as saying: “If it was me, I could have kept my cool. He is still growing up and did not have anyone older who could restrain him.”
The two camps fixed the fight for July and persuaded the boxing federation of the small European nation of Luxembourg to sanction it because no one else would. This will be the first time a fight will be held in Britain, licensed by a foreign federation. The disgusted Luxembourg government withdrew its subsidies from the federation in protest.
It is a big story swirling around a young man from Zimbabwe. Chisora was born and bred in Harare and left for Britain to join his mother in 1999. He fights out of Finchley—Margaret Thatcher’s old constituency—and is a naturalized Briton with an accent more cockney than Shona.
Chisora fought 20 times as an amateur, before turning professional in 2007. Before he was banned, he was ranked 13th in the world heavyweight division, notching up 15 wins in 18 fights, with nine knock-outs. His winning streak of eight fights ended with the boxing authorities suspending Chisora for four months for biting journeyman boxer Paul Butlin in a heavyweight clash at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, London. As a result, he missed a fight for the British Heavyweight title against Danny Williams in 2009. He would defeat Williams a year later to become the British champion.
What irked Chisora was that Haye was given the opportunity to challenge for the world title first. Haye went on to lose to Wladimir in a poor showing after declaring that he would knock out both the Klitschko brothers in one night. Haye later claimed that he went into the fight with a broken toe.
By the way, Chisora went to Churchill Boys High School in
Harare—its mascot is a bulldog. Its spirit follows him still.

Grimy Grudge Match

Fresh from training in London, the approaching Olympics is just starting to feel real for Johny Akinyemi.
<div id="attachment_932" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-932" class="size-large wp-image-932" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/143000275-1-1024x663.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="307" />Aerial view of the Olympic Stadium</div>
“After I qualified it was a bit of a dream, and then you have to quickly realize it’s not that long until the games. You have to get down and focus on the training and put in the hours and the hard work,” he says.
A British-born canoeist of Nigerian blood, Akinyemi, 23, has a realistic shot at a medal in London in the white water slalom, having beaten Beijing bronze medalist, Benjamin Boukpeti, in the qualifiers to book his place. Since then, he has put in the hard graft, training at altitude in South Africa and on courses in Cardiff and London. “Now I’m at quite a high level of training. I don’t want to peak too soon,” he says.
Raised in Warrington, near Manchester in England, Akinyemi represented the British team at a junior level, and was for a time the country’s top youth canoeist before switching allegiance to Nigeria, narrowly missing out on a trip to China in 2008. Since then, he has worked hard to improve the profile and practice of the sport in West Africa. The Nigerian Canoe Federation was founded in 2007, attached to the country’s active rowing association, based on Victoria Island in Lagos, and Akinyemi has been there since the start, getting a crash course in the country’s infamous bureaucracy on the way.
“We got a container full of boats delivered to Nigeria—some sprint canoes and slalom kayaks. It took about 18 months to get them out of the port, but eventually we got them out,” he says.
It is unlikely that the sport is going to challenge Nigeria’s other sporting passions—soccer and wrestling—but it is generating a buzz in certain circles. The country picked up two canoeing medals in the All Africa Games, on top of Akinyemi’s own qualification for London 2012. Once the games are over, he will head to Nigeria’s Calabar region to scout out some white water to train on and to hopefully set up a club there to train the next generation of slalom competitors. Akinyemi believes that the potential is there for Nigeria to achieve.
“In Lagos, there are canoes everywhere. There are villages out on the water—canoes are a way of life for those guys. They’re not carbon kevlar, but I’m sure that if we could, in some way, get these guys in competitive canoeing they would be good at it. They’re used to the water, they’re used to using the paddle, and they’ve got the strength.”
The success and the interest has not, however, transmuted into riches for the sport or for Akinyemi himself, who is currently looking for a sponsor. Up until 2011, most of his funding came from his father, who paid for airfares and gear. The Nigerian Olympic Committee has paid for his canoe for the London games and is contributing to the fees for training on the Olympic course, which come to £60 ($93) per hour. The Olympic Solidarity Commission, which funds athletes from lower income countries, allocates him around $1,000 a month for training and equipment, which, given the cost of canoes and the requirement for international travel, is a drop in the river.
The dreamlike rush of excitement, followed by hard graft and tangles over sponsorship, of Akinyemi’s experience is, in microcosm, the London Olympics. Since winning the bid, the euphoria has dissipated amidst a mixture of traditional British cynicism and genuine economic pain. The 2009 recession was followed by a brief and uninspiring calm, before a combination of deep state spending cuts and the European sovereign debt crisis dragged the British economy back into the mire. The Olympic stadia are among the few buildings of scale still under construction in London, as funding dried up and the rationale vanished for new skyscrapers in a city where jobs were being lost.
Britain notoriously overspends and delivers late on its big projects: the Millennium Dome, £200 million ($362.3 million) over budget; the new Wembley stadium, a year too late; so it was hardly surprising that expectations were fairly low. The experience of the Dome also highlighted the difficulty of turning showcase projects into useful infrastructure.
The Olympics, more than any event, is known for its white elephants. Greece, which hosted the 2004 games, as if it hasn’t suffered enough this year, has the embarrassment of a number of crumbling and unused facilities. After spending more than €10 billion ($12.2 billion) on running the games, Greece now has the cost of the upkeep of these abandoned buildings.
On the flip side, both the Barcelona and Atlanta games, in 1992 and 1996, respectively, are seen as exemplars of how to handle legacy programs. Both benefited from smart investments in infrastructure and marketing. London hopes to follow their example, rather than that of Athens, but the signs are not encouraging. A deal to sell the Olympic stadium to West Ham football club fell through in October 2011 and the Olympic Park Legacy Committee is now on the hunt for tenants.
The rest of the site in East London will be renamed the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, with the sports facilities opened up to the public and the athletes’ village turned into housing. Just how much demand there will be for a high tech velodrome in Stratford, one of the capital’s more deprived areas, remains to be seen.
One part of the organization does seem to be running smoothly: Sponsorship, branding and broadcast rights are expected to generate around £2 billion ($3 billion) for the International Olympic Committee and the London organizers, and commentators have remarked on how visible the corporate presence is in the 2012 event.
The 70,000 volunteer “Games Makers” will have their training materials prepared by McDonald’s, which will be operating the world’s largest fast food outlet in the Olympic village for the duration of the games. The US chain is one of 11 worldwide “Olympic Partners”—a group which also includes Samsung, Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble and, controversially, Dow Chemical.
Dow’s contribution, which includes a “wrap” for the Olympic stadium, caused uproar amongst human rights groups, including Amnesty International. Dow acquired Union Carbide, the company responsible for the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India. Fears that the Indian team would boycott the opening ceremony, or even the entire Olympics, proved unfounded, but the issue has left a sour taste.
The commercialization of the games—the organizers insist that private sponsorship is what makes them possible—has also been a story. The aggressive clampdown on the use of trademarks, including the words “London 2012” have made headlines as small businesses in East London are warned that they could find themselves in serious trouble should they try to associate themselves with the event. The policing of this skirted close to farce at times, with reports that monitors from Locog—the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games—have arrived on set at photo shoots to prevent non-sponsors from recreating famous sporting moments or straying too close to the games. An East London florist was threatened with legal action unless she took down a display showing the famous rings made from flowers. Athletes who tweet endorsements for the “wrong” brand have been told they face expulsion. Others have sneered at the spectacle of the supposedly solemn ceremony of the torch relay being led by the Coca-Cola “Move to the Beat” bus blaring out pop music.
In working class East London, there is a sense that the London Olympics is a show more for the brands than for the people. There is also the question of whether the city can accommodate the extra 325,000 people per day using the transport system; the ire caused by the “games lanes” set aside to allow officials to bypass the inevitable gridlock; the near-indecipherable logo; the oddly phallic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville; the £500 million ($768.5 million)—plus security operation that has seen anti-aircraft missiles stationed on rooftops in Tower Hamlets and warships in the Thames.
Even so, the excitement is building, albeit not as fast as the organizers might have hoped. The torch relay—headed of course by the sponsors’ buses—flickered in the public imagination before a long-awaited spell of hot weather hit the country and the British public moved en masse away from their television sets and into the sunshine. There was first the Queen’s Jubilee weekend to get out of the way, and then the European football championships, which usually puts the country into a disappointed mood. With these out of the way, the criticisms and introspection could either crescendo ahead of the opening ceremony on July 27, or disappear beneath the kind of pressured, euphoric patriotism the East End is famous for. For competitors like Akinyemi, however, it is unlikely to matter—he has canoes and the pride of Nigeria on his mind.

Canoe Win A Medal?

Igugu is the horse that stole the hearts of many and cost those who failed to believe.  An Australian filly sired by an Epsom Derby winner, Galileo, Igugu has sent waves through the racing industry and was named “Horse of the Year”. Igugu was bred by Kia Ora Stud and bought at a yearling sale for $65,000 by Livestock Traders in 2009. It was then sold to Andre Macdonald—a former electrician and now principal officer at Lido Electrical’s East Rand branch, in South Africa—from the Summerhill draft in 2009 at the Ready-To-Run Sale for $127,530. Macdonald had gone to the sale with the secret intention of buying both of Galileo’s fillies in order to up his chances of owning a champion, only to be outbid for the first horse by South Africa’s top trainer Mike de Kock at $255,060. Luck was on his side when the second horse turned out to be the champion.
Macdonald’s love of horses began when his family moved to the northern suburbs of Johannesburg at a time when horse riding was popular with children. His daughter took an interest and joined a stable. He then bought a horse each so they could ride together on their property. His daughter grew up, got married and Macdonald sold the horses.
“Before I knew it a friend of mine said they had a horse for sale and asked ‘do you want to buy it?’ I said ‘I don’t want to buy it but I’ll think about it.’ Twelve o’clock that night they phoned me and said ‘your horse is standing in the stables.’ But I didn’t say no, I said ‘okay I’ll take it.’ It was the biggest mistake I probably made,” Macdonald recalls. Sitting with a dud, Macdonald then got serious.
Igugu is now co-owned by the Macdonalds and Sheikh Mohamed bin Kalifa Al Maktoum—who also co-owns the 2010 Vodacom Durban July (the July) winner. The royal family clearly has a love for the sport. Years ago, in the United States, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is reported to have bid $10 million for a horse at a yearling sale. Sheikh Mohamed bin Kalifa Al Maktoum‘s share came about when he took interest in Igugu and went into talks with Mick Goss, CEO of Summerhill Stud, about acquiring his 25% stake. Not one to be satisfied with a minority share, the sale was in jeopardy unless the Macdonalds, who owned 75%, sold 25% shares to Sheikh Mohamed bin Kalifa Al Maktoum to ensure an equal partnership.  Macdonald says this is something he would only have done for Goss.
It’s common practice in the industry to have more than one owner of a horse. As much as this can be seen as spreading the winnings, having more than one investor means spreading the risk as well as the costs. These costs include training fees, farrier fees, veterinary care, insurance, race entry fees, jockey fees, ownership registration fees and transport.
For most this is a business after. For Macdonald, it’s a sport.
And as with any business, there is money to be made and Igugu has made more than her fair share for her owners.  She’s a Triple Tiara Princess, winner of the 2011 Vodacom Durban July as well as the 2012 J&amp;B Met (the Met). She is only the second horse to have ever won both the July and the Met. The only other horse to have done so is Pocket Power, who also holds the record for winning the July three times. The prize money for the July and Met alone were $361,600 and $301,330 respectively.
The industry is big and money is no problem for those looking to be a part of the thrill. There are seven sales that take place every year and they work the same as any auction. Potential buyers get a catalogue beforehand and the bidding wars begin. The aggregate price at the Emperors Palace National Yearling Sale held in April was $10,576,311; it was $564,713 at the Milkwood Stud Sale in May and $922,184 at the Cape Mare &amp; Weanling Sale in the same month.
Macdonald laughs as he remembers how he first tried to pick horses at sales. Not knowing what he was doing, he’d shadow the trainers while they checked out the horses.
“If he wants to turn his head left, I turn my head left and if he goes right, I go right.”
You must remember that these buyers take risks on untested horses. De Kock does not shy away from the fact that this is a risky business and is all about luck. He admits that picking up a horse at a sale is not an exact science but reiterates Macdonald’s advice of having a professional around to help.
If it’s so risky, why get into it?
“There is a 1% chance of a horse being a champion from a sale but that’s the intrigue. It’s a sport that becomes a part of your life,” he says with a hint of excitement in his voice.
For de Kock, it all started with two years of military training at an equestrian center and then moved on to work for a number of trainers. In 1988, the trainer de Kock worked for died and since he already had a good working relationship with the owners and staff, he took over the late trainer’s string. He is now the top trainer in the country and is also an owner. Having won the July four times, he’s three wins short of the record for trainers.
Training a race horse takes a hell of a lot of patience says the expert. Purchases would occur when the horse is around 18 months old. If you buy one from a Ready-to-Run Sale it can be ready to race by 24 months, provided it suffers no injury or illness. The monthly cots will average somewhere between R7,000 ($840) and R8,000 ($960), but the rewards for a great runner are tremendous. The industry consists of owners, trainers, breeders, racing operators, insurers, transporters and blood stock agents. Racing operator, Golden Circle, stages both the Vodacom Durban July and the J&amp;B Met. The company has numerous operations and reports an annual turnover of more than $216.8 million. Racing operator Phumelela’s glory comes from staging the Triple Crown and the Triple Tiara. The Triple Tiara’s spoils are $783,151, including the bonus for the horse that wins all three legs. The Triple Tiara—won last year by Igugu—has a combined prize of $270,911, not including the $120,366 bonus.
With this amount of money on the line, it’s no wonder these fine creatures are insured.  The way that the insurance works, is that the horse’s value is established by looking at its track record, breeding and other attributes.  If the horse is a filly, its value will be higher as it can be used for breeding. An unknown horse that’s just been bought at a sale will be insured at the fall of hammer price. As the horse develops a track record and its value increases, so will its insured amount.
The international scene is also a potential money maker for the lucky few. The Dubai Carnival in January has nine events, with $27.25 million to be won.  Unfortunately, the export protocol needs reform. Australia requires 60 days quarantine in the African Sickness Free Zone in Cape Town, South Africa, followed by another 60 days in Europe. Dubai involves 21 days of quarantine in Johannesburg, 90 days in Mauritius, 30 days in Europe and two weeks in Dubai. This means that a horse competing internationally not only has to forgo most of the South African season but it also loses training time and so will run at a disadvantage against other horses on the track.
This is all due to the fear of the African Horse Sickness (AHS). Paranoia, de Kock calls it. He claims that this is the one thing holding the industry back from being a major export industry that creates jobs and adds to government revenue. What we need, he says, is to get more aggressive and let the trading partners know that this is not a major threat. The fact that South African horses competing internationally are doing so well, is a testament to how strong the industry is.
Igugu is geared to start her international career in Dubai. As for her chances for this year’s July?
“Some people don’t win the Met or the July. I was lucky enough to win both. I don’t know when that will ever happen again,” says a realistic Macdonald. He feels that his horse has already done more for him than he could have asked for.
Horse racing has a tradition of being elitist and de Kock says that the image that the sport portrays, along with that of a lack of transparency, is another one of one of the industry’s problems. Syndication, however, is one way to get around this as it makes the sport accessible to more people but de Kock says that it is up to people to educate themselves and the industry to demonstrate the available opportunities. Nonetheless, de Kock is, as he puts it, “bullish” about the future of the South African horse racing industry and expects an explosion if it were to get it right.

Horsing Around

Ever since the first steam-engine automobile (capable of carrying people) was developed in 1769, manufacturers have constantly sought to improve their vehicles; not only in terms of technology, performance and safety, but also with regards to their luxury offerings. An exemplary brand is Bugatti—founded in France in 1909 by Italian-born Ettore Bugatti. Raised in a family consisting of artists (his father Carlo was an importer of art nouveau furniture, as well as a jewelry designer); Bugatti emphasized design when he strove for success in competitive motor racing.
Ettore’s attention to detail was such that Bugatti engines were hand scraped to ensure gaskets weren’t required for sealing. Rather than bolting springs to their axles, Bugatti’s springs were passed through a perfectly measured opening, which proved a far more elegant solution. Ettore famously described Bentleys—whose name has become synonymous with luxury—as “the world’s fastest lorries”, which highlights just how prestigious he believed his rare cars to be.
Other notable brands that offered unsurpassed creature comforts (along with their extravagant price tags) were Delage, Delahaye, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Cadillac, Lincoln, Buick, Packard, Peerless, Pierce-Arrow, Marmon, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi, along with newcomer, Lexus. In modern times, the three German marquee carmakers have dominated the luxury (or premium) market, but French and Korean companies are now challenging their global dominance.
China, South Korea’s closest car-manufacturing neighbor, has one of the largest and hungriest luxury car markets in the world; this segment grew more than 30% last year. Audi has been the dominant supplier for this insatiable demand with some 313,000 units making their way into Chinese hands last year. In 2008 and 2009 respectively, Hyundai began tapping this lucrative market with its Equus and Rohens offerings and more recently with the Genesis. Termed ‘Intelligent Luxury’, Hyundai, in taking on the Teutonic powerhouses, has delivered competitive quality, power, performance and customer service without a hefty price tag.
The global luxury segment has room for expansion, especially in China says Audi’s sales chief, Peter Schwarzenbauer.
“We expect the premium segment to grow much more strongly than the overall market. China has 304 cities with at least a billion people and, so far, we have dealers in only 187 of them. The premium market still has extremely good growth prospects. We’re scratching the surface in China,” he says. China is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest luxury car market by 2015.
As a sign of things to come, Hyundai’s Genesis was named ‘Near Luxury Car’ segment leader in 2010 according to Strategic Vision’s Total Quality Index (TQI) ousting rivals BMW (3-series), Mercedes-Benz (C-Class) and Audi (A4). TQI measures are taken according to the complete experience the cars have to offer, from purchasing to owning, driving and performing. The Genesis scored well thanks to its competitive price, warranty, many standard features and reliability. Hyundai also provides its Equus owners with a service called ‘Your Place, Your Time’. Owners simply schedule their service appointments on a mobile application and a customer care representative collects the car and leaves a loan vehicle (another Equus) in its place. Such endeavors have seen Hyundai rated among the Top 5 Brands, on the basis of brand value, according to a recent Consumer Perception Survey.
Sister company, Kia, is mirroring this bid to take over the premium segment. Sketches of its upcoming Cadenza–to be released in the Korean market in the first half of this year–which is code-named KH, have garnered much interest in the press. Kia will make use of Hyundai’s existing platform and thus shorten its learning curve. “Our new flagship sedan integrates all of our key capabilities such as design, performance, high-tech features and infotainment,” claims the director of overseas marketing for the group, Soon-Nam Lee. Kia and Hyundai plan to appeal to first-time luxury car buyers who can’t afford the traditional German juggernauts.
Naturally, the greatest stumbling block to dethroning the competition has been the fact that Hyundai, Kia, Citroën, Peugeot and Volkswagen’s brands were built on the concept of producing economical transport. Ominously, Nissan Motors CEO, Carlos Ghosn, believes the strategy of mass-market car companies branching out into the higher echelons could backfire.
“The definition of a luxury brand is a brand for which you’re ready to pay a higher price tag for what it represents. If you start to be a bargain, yes, you’re going to have a boost in sales in the short-term, but you’re going to lose the luxury halo after a while,” he says.
His view isn’t a commonly held one as other manufacturers feel that by providing premium products, they can compete in the same space.
“Volkswagen is positioned as ‘Das Auto’ or ‘The Car’ and we are the volume premium brand in SA. This is manifested in both the type of vehicles we produce and sell and in the quality, finish and materials found in our vehicles. In addition to this, while we are the market leader in South Africa, we offer a premium range of vehicles which includes the Passat, CC and Touareg,” says Matt Gennrich, general manager of Communications for VW South Africa. “The big three—BMW, Mercedes and Audi, account for the majority of sales while other players such as Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus and, of course, Volkswagen, are all competing for a share in the premium segment which accounts for about 19% of the total passenger market. It takes time to build a brand, and we have invested substantially in the last few years in television, print, and outdoor advertising. The Touareg established its credentials right from the launch of the first generation with the V10 diesel and the class-leading technology offered in the car in the luxury SUV market,” he says
French manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroën is also not sitting on the sidelines. The long-awaited Citroën DS5 is on the brink of being unveiled, and this will be the flagship model in its premium DS range of cars. Based on the C-Sport Lounge concept unveiled at the 2005 Frankfurt Motor Show, the DS5 combines a coupe with some grand touring features. This car emphasizes technology and luxury embodied in clever elements such as a color heads-up display, individually-selected lighting for the cockpit roof, seats employing the ‘watch bracelet’ design and significant soundproofing. The DS5 even sports a refrigerated storage compartment under the armrest and has Citroën Wi-Fi On-Board so passengers can surf the internet while they’re being driven.
While the mass-market manufacturers are striving to get a slice of the premium pie by offering more for your money, it remains to be seen whether consumers will be swayed by the affordability of the competitor brands, or whether they’ll subscribe to Ghosn’s ideology of paying for the privilege of luxury and exclusivity.

Luxury On A Budget

There are few dreams bigger than competing at the Olympic Games and for the Investec South Africa Women’s hockey team, that dream was nearly shattered.
Despite winning the Africa Cup in 2011 and meeting the International Olympic Committee standards for qualification, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) decided the competition had not been good enough and they should qualify again for the Games, which start in July.
What a crushing blow to the team and management. The message they were given could be summed up as: “Sorry, we’re not sure you’re good enough, so you’ll have to try again.”
SASCOC’s stringent qualification requirements, however, were standard across all sports to ensure those representing the country are genuine medal contenders.
So much for the underdog and outsiders having a chance. It leads one to wonder if SASCOC has ever heard of upsets in sport. Any child excelling at an Olympic sport would simply like the opportunity to participate in the Games. To have a local set of double standards is fair neither on the individual nor the team.
The women’s hockey team, to their credit, did not let the disappointment get to them as they went out to re-qualify in a gruelling nine-day tournament in Delhi in February. Again, they made it.
Led by 28-year-old captain Marsha Marescia, who was named Player of the Tournament, the South Africans prevailed in the final over a strong Indian side that had beaten them in the past. “I think if you were given the opportunity to go to the Olympic Games and all you had to do was win one event, you would give everything,” said Marescia before the tournament.
“All the teams participating are going to go flat out, but I think that with our mix of youth and experience, we are feeling confident.”
Teammate Kim Hubach said it was a relief when her side made it over the final hurdle and hinted at SASCOC’s curveball. “It was a feeling you can’t describe; months of hard work had finally paid off. The road to London has not been easy but we have grown as a team and beaten the odds.
“I would go to war with these girls. We have grown so close; they’re like a second family.”
The men’s team found themselves in the same situation. They too won the Africa Cup last year, but were forced to take part in a similar qualifying tournament in Japan at the end of April. As with the women, the men were playing for the only spot available to book their place in the Olympic showpiece.
For SASCOC’s sake, it’s lucky they made it, beating Japan 2-1, or the sporting body would have been left trying to explain how a team a fraction outside the top 10 (South Africa is ranked 12th in the world)—and which previously qualified—was not good enough to go to London.

Moving The Goalposts

Runners Kipchoge Keino and Pamela Jelimo are divided by age, but united by the fact that they are both Olympic champions. The contrast in their Olympic lives tells the story of half a century of change for African athletes.
Keino—known as “Kip”—ran when athletics was an amateur sport. Jelimo burst onto the scene as a professional athlete. For her, the Olympic medal meant ‘increased personal brand value’—as the marketing men say these days.
Kip, 72, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, is chairman of the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK). He has kept his lean, athletic, whipcord frame that propelled him down the track to glory in Mexico.
Kip won the 1,500 meters gold in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, amid the energy-sapping, thin air caused by the altitude, on a day he defied the doctors, who recommended that he pull out. Legend has it that Kip was stuck in Mexico City’s notorious traffic before the race and had to run a mile to the stadium to make the starting line-up in time. In the race, Kip beat United States track star Jim Ryun by more than 20 meters—a record, before going on to win the silver in the 5,000 meters. He was just 23.
<div id="attachment_816" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-816" class="wp-image-816 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/50438922_10-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Kenyan track star Kipchoge Keino (L) finishing ahead of teammate Ben Jipcho (574) in the 3,000-meter steeplechase final at the Summer Olympics. (Photo by John Dominis//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)</div>
Four years later, in the 1972 Olympics in Germany, he won gold in the 3,000 meters steeplechase and silver in the 1,500 meters.
“To be an Olympic champion takes a lot of dedication from an individual,” he says.
“The Olympic gold was for you, the country and the continent of Africa. There were very few athletes from Africa in those days and it is not like what you have today.”
Kip says his biggest problem was getting time off from work.
“Sometimes being on duty meant missing meals and then you had to go train, even without a meal. There was nothing like nutrition,” he says.
“During our time we had no coaches. It was up to you to personally work on your skills in your own free time. We were not allowed to go out for more than 28 days a year because of a rule put in place by the International Association of Athletics Federations. In those days, we had amateur status, not like today.”
Kip was a police officer from the late 1960s, rising through the ranks to become chief inspector. He retired from athletics in 1973.
Jelimo embodies the renaissance of Kenyan women in athletics: for the first time, they have better prospects of bringing home gold than the men.
Jelimo, 22, the reigning 800 meters Olympic champion, is also a police officer. But unlike in Kip’s day, there are more flexible working hours to allow for international athletics events.
Also unlike Kip, Jelimo has a number of trainers—including Bryan Engelherdt and other runners like Daniel Sirima—to help her prepare. She is expected to be one of the hotshots at the London Olympics as she runs for a second gold in the 800 meters.
It hasn’t been easy. Jelimo may have gone back to winning ways this year, clinching gold at the World Indoor Championships in Turkey in March, but injury, namely a strained Achilles tendon, has been her biggest opponent.
“I have suffered for three years because of many injuries, but I pray that I will continue working hard and keep the spirit burning, so that by the end of June, I will be in my best competitive form.”
<div id="attachment_817" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-817" class="size-large wp-image-817" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Forbes.Africa-Dr.Keino-12cm8cm@300dpi-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Kip Keino</div>
The Olympics is her main objective. “I know that I am the defending champion, but the main objective will be to run under two minutes in the Kenyan qualifying rounds to make it to the Olympics.”
Jelimo, then 18, won gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2000, which was the icing on the cake for a very successful year. She became the first Kenyan to win the $1 million Golden League Jackpot that very year. Those earnings were a just reward for the years of toil in which her parents struggled to put her through school.
“Athletics is like a cake and everybody wants to have a piece of it.  Sports is very rewarding and people should take it seriously [if they have the] talent,” she says.
Kip was actually one of the athletes at the forefront of making the sport professional. “We were not being paid for running. So the year after the Munich Olympics, we decided to form an International Track Association (ITA), where the athletes would run in field events and make money. The athletes would be paid like in other sport such as tennis. The IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federation] realised that ITA would overtake them and so IAAF also started paying athletes the money.”
The prize money has made athletics more lucrative as a sport and as Jelimo works her way back from injury, she acknowledges the increasing competition in the sport.
“It is hard coming back, after being out, to compete with people who have been training for three months. You cannot take a race and say it is simple. There is no race which is that simple,” she says.
Some of her main challengers for the Olympic gold are fellow Kenyan runner Janeth Jepkosgei and the South African, Caster Semenya.
“I don’t fear anybody when I am in the field. When I am in shape, I am in shape because you know everybody is fighting for it and you should be fighting for it. It is all mental,” she says.
Kip says there is rising competition and that victory is hard these days.
“Well, for Kenyans it can be natural, but what about the other people in the world? They can also be nurtured to compete. Anybody in the world can do anything with the talent God has given them,” he says. “There is nothing special about Kenyan athletes. The only thing that is special is their training. They prepare themselves physically and mentally.”

A Tale Of Two  Runners

Most of the technique that put me in good stead, in my professional career, I learnt on the street as a youngster. It was there that I honed my skills, because there was always tough competition. On the street, you learn human values and enjoyment of the game. I remember the laughter and the fun and the fierce competition in ball-juggling skills, passing, shooting and all the other fancy footwork.
My first memories watching football came as soon as I could walk. I used to accompany my father to meetings and football matches. My father was an executive committee member of Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) and Chairman of Mufulira Blackpool. He used to take my brother and me to matches almost every weekend.
We played barefoot on the gravel roads of Kamuchanga Township in Mufulira, on the copperbelt, every day. The ball was made of brown rubber and we were either at school or playing football. There were few cars in those days, so we would erect two little goalposts and play four against four or five against five. We would play ‘three change goals’ and ‘six finish ball’—meaning half time was when a team scored three goals and the victors were the team that scored six. There were times when the game lasted 10 minutes; there were times when the game took an hour. As kids, fatigue escaped us, as we played until sunset. At school, Perseverance Primary school in Ndola, my first leadership role was as captain of my under-10 team.
<div id="attachment_812" style="width: 766px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-812" class="size-full wp-image-812" src="/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/kalu-and-Charlie.jpg" alt="" width="756" height="458" />Kalusha during his younger years as a soccer player</div>
I played for Buseko Community Centre Club under-14 side. This was my first taste of club football. This was a fantastic team and most of us were also the ball boys for Mufulira Blackpool, an honor which we took very seriously and gave us the privilege of seeing our footballing heroes at close range. Pre-match we watched in awe as our heroes got ready, warmed up and took to the field, with us leading them. The feeling was incredible as we emerged from the tunnel. I will never forget the roar of the crowds as we sprinted to take our positions on the field. That was my first taste of an adrenaline rush; it felt like we were going to war. My favourite ball boy position was always as close to the goalposts as possible. I was fascinated by the skill involved in scoring and found myself engrossed in the magic of the game.
Growing up in Zambia, school football was important and alive with fierce competition. I progressed through primary school as a consistently good player, but I really started to make my mark in secondary school. There were no specific age groups in those times but rather one team per school.
At training, I proved my skill even though I played without boots, was quite skinny and younger than the rest of the team. The coach always found a place for me to travel with them. Whether to carry the balls or just watch from the bench, I was always included and my hunger for the game grew. In 1979, my brother Benjamin, who was playing for Mufulira Blackpool, was called up to the Army.
At the age of 16, I attended trials at my brother’s team and was selected and registered. I fondly remember how proud I was to have finally made the leap from a schoolboy to serious player. It took me 11 games in the reserve side before I broke into the first team. The reserve league in my career was much like playing on the streets where the competition was tough and only the best surfaced.
We won 1-0 during my first match in the first team, which we played against Lusaka Tigers at Matero Stadium in Lusaka; I scored the winning goal! I still remember this day like it was yesterday. The coach always came to training with two team lists—a reserve team list that played before the main game and a first team list. When the coach read out the reserve list and my name was not called out, I started to worry, wondering what I had done wrong to be left out. But, as I was wondering, my name was read out for the first team and I jumped for joy!  It was the most exhilarating experience in my life. I remember informing my parents that I was going into camp with Mufulira Blackpool FC; they were both proud and bemused at my 16-year-old nerve and tenacity.
The following year, I made the switch from Blackpool to the much bigger, if not the biggest club in Zambia, the legendary cup fighters: Mufulira Wanderers. This switch was due to my father being put under pressure by his employers, Mufulira Copper Mines, the then sponsors of Wanderers.
This is where I enjoyed some of my finest days in football to roaring crowds at the packed Shinde Stadium. I was in gradefive by then. I would spend half of my small stipend on cold drinks and bread buns for my classmates; the other half went to my very proud mother. In the same year I made my debut in the Copperbelt School select, as well as being called to the Zambia Schools National Team. These structures were highly successful in unearthing talent nationwide as well as maintaining the continuity that made Zambia an African football powerhouse.
At the age of 19, after rigorous trials, I was picked for Zambia. This was in 1982 just after Zambia came back from the Africa Nations Cup in Libya with a bronze medal.
Looking back at my early football career in Zambia, it is clear to me that everything I needed was instilled in me at a very early age. For me, this hammers home the importance of football development at youth level. This development, coupled with sustainability and continuity, is the key to a strong footballing nation.
There is no better teacher than sport itself, you should strive for enjoyment first, then the technical aspects will follow. There is definitely a strong link between grassroots and glory.

Grassroots And Glory

The gun cracked. The runner shot forward. Her breathing was normal. She soon found her rhythm as they hit the first bend. The group at the front was bunched. The woman in green and gold held steady. As they neared the 400-meter mark, she could feel the Kenyan, Janeth Jepkosgei, breathing down her neck. As the bell went for the last lap, she increased the pace but the Kenyan went with her. That’s when it happened. Two hundred meters to go; it was like a second gun exploded. Eighteen-year-old Caster Semenya surged forward with her long, powerful strides as she tore away from the field to win her first world 800-meter title in a remarkable time of 1:55.45—a glorious victory.
It was the 800-meter women’s final at the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, and Semenya had just become the first South African to win the event.
The world was at her feet. Then the gender controversy began. Suddenly, Semenya was known for her deep voice and muscular build, not normally associated with a teenage girl, rather than her running. She was subjected to a long and public gender verification saga by world athletics. People argued over her case; petty politicians used her as a political football. Semenya was withdrawn from competition until July 2010, before she was cleared to run again—a long and painful exclusion. Many would have given up—she could have, but she refused.
<div id="attachment_806" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-806" class="size-large wp-image-806" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/124075220_10-685x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="709" />FRANCE &#8211; AUGUST 26: The 9th Athletics world championships in St Denis In Paris, France On August 26, 2003 &#8211; Maria Mutola (Moz) wins gold medal in the 800 meters. (Photo by Pool BASSIGNAC/DUCLOS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)</div>
Semenya came back to defend her title in 2011 in Daegu, South Korea, and was beaten narrowly in the final straight as she came in with a time of 1:56.35—a commendable performance, considering the events leading up to the race. Now Semenya plans to go one step further—she wants gold at the Olympic Games in London.
The odds, for the first time, are stacked in her favor. Since her win in Berlin almost three years ago, she has been in contact with former Olympic Gold medallist in the 800-meters at the 2000 games, Mozambican Maria Mutola.
No stranger to gender controversy herself, although all was proved unwarranted, the 39-year-old Mutola recently replaced Semenya’s coach, Michael Seme, at the end of last year. Legend has it that Mutola was caught masquerading as a man when she played in a football cup final back home in Maputo. Amid the furore, a coach spotted her running talent and the rest, as they say, is history.
Mutola dominated the two-lap race during the 1990s and into the next century. During this time, she became a seven-time world indoor gold medallist and she also added three world 800 meters gold medals to her tally.
Mutola and Semenya make a powerful team gunning for gold in July. Mutola trains the now 21-year-old prodigy in Pretoria, north of Johannesburg.
“Me and Caster have been talking since she won the World Championships in Berlin, so we’ve been in contact ever since,” she pauses with a glint of pride in her eye.
“Any time she needed advice, she would call me and then we would talk a little bit. It’s been a long-term relationship. I’ve known Caster since then, it just fell into place, so it wasn’t anything strange when she approached me and asked if I would train her.”
Since then, the duo have been specific in their targets, and Semenya recently ran her second Olympic qualifying time at a Yellow Pages Meeting in Pretoria on April 21, guaranteeing her place at the Olympics showpiece.
She ran 1:59.58 and in so doing, at high-altitude, became the first South African woman to run under two minutes on home soil in 21 years.
Now Mutola has her sights firmly set on the top honor: the Olympic gold.
“[I think] very good advice is to be in shape, to stay healthy and go to London in shape, to be able to win it.
“[Judging from] all the Olympics I have been through, it is going to take under two minutes to be able to win it. You have to produce 1:55/1:56 to be able to win the race because everyone is training for the same event—to be an Olympic champion.”
Now Semenya heads overseas to begin her final preparations by competing in Europe.
“The most important thing is to have confidence in oneself going to these European track meets. You have to be able to win over there, run good times and go to the Olympics with a lot of confidence. That is a very important thing for athletes.”
Semenya was expected to qualify sooner for the showpiece, but now that she has run the time, everything is back on track, according to Mutola as she alluded again to the gold medal.
“In terms of her preparations, I have to say it is going very well at the moment, I was a bit concerned at the beginning but I see that we are improving, we are doing the right thing. Everything is going well at the moment.
“The most important thing is for her to stay in shape and believe in herself. When she gets to the Olympic Games, anybody who qualifies for the finals has a chance of winning gold.”
Mutola believes Semenya could be the best ever. She says the world record set in 1983 by Czech runner Jarmila Kratochvílová looks set to tumble if Semenya stays on course. “I always thought she would be the one to break the world record because when she was 18, she was running 1:55’s and I think when she is about 25, and more mature, she would probably break the world record.
“If you are 18 and run a 1:55, that means that if you are 20-something, you would be able to run between 1:52 and 1:53 and that indication I see in Caster. I hope and I know she can be the one to break that world record that has been standing for a very long time.”
One thing is for sure: with the troubles of her past behind her, the Mutola-Semenya southern African team will be the hot favorite come the end of July. The history books await.

African Power Sisters  Strive For Gold

For eight months, Equatorial Guinea’s Eric Moussambani trained in the only swimming pool he could find. The hotel pool in Malabo was 20 meters long and had no lane markers. He did not meet the qualifying standards for the Olympic Games.
But Moussambani was invited to be part of the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 through a wildcard program. It was started to allow athletes from poor countries a chance to compete.
Moussambani had never swum a distance of more than 50 meters and had never even seen a pool that long. A race of 100 meters was a tough ask for the then 22-year-old. He completed the distance in 1:52:72, more than twice the time it took all the other swimmers to finish.
<div id="attachment_799" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-799" class="size-large wp-image-799" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/57122822_10-1024x670.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="310" />MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA &#8211; MARCH 18: Edwin Ekiring of Uganda plays a shot during his badminton at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre during day three of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games March 18, 2006 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images)</div>
Moussambani, who became known as Eric the Eel, won hearts that day as the crowd cheered him to the finish, no matter how long it took.
Today, his story is only remembered for its novelty value, but it carries a deeper meaning. It illustrates a problem that has plagued Africa for as long as it has competed in the Olympic Games—under-achievement. Poor facilities and lack of funds are cited as the main reasons for the scarcity of medals and those two triggers have more intricate undertones. Olympic sports can be elitist and require specialized equipment and coaching, which are not always available in countries struggling to provide for their people.
Every four years, Africa sends a proud, hopeful contingent to the Olympic Games, which the continent is yet to host. Although they often return with little gold, sometimes a success story shines through the clouds. London 2012 could bring more of these rays of hope. Most of them are expected to be in the track and field events where Africa is strong, or in the pool, the ring and a few unlikely places.
Kenya, South Africa and Egypt are Africa’s three most successful teams, with 22, 20 and 10 gold medals respectively, thanks to their runners, swimmers and weight-lifters. Algeria excels at boxing and athletics, where the teams have won all four of their medals. Eritrea is known for its runners and Mali for its footballers, who made it to the semi-finals of the African Nations’ Cup earlier this year.
The running track is still likely to be the key to success for Kenya, but South Africa can rely on an array of sports, including women’s football and hockey teams and a BMX rider, Sifiso Nhlapo.
Egypt will bank on judo, archery and handball and has a team of synchronized swimmers. Algeria has high hopes for its judo pair, Soraya Haddad and Amar Benikhlef.
<div id="attachment_802" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-802" class="size-large wp-image-802" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/84051727_10-732x1024.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="663" />BEIJING &#8211; AUGUST 22: Wania Monteiro of Cape Verde competes in the individual all-around qualification of the rhythmic gymnastics at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on August 22, 2008. in Beijing, China.(Photo by Bob Thomas/Getty Images)</div>
For the first time, Eritrea has entered a non-runner in the Olympics. Daniel Teklehaimanot has qualified in the men’s road race cycling event, while Mali will be looking for medals in taekwondo, with double champion Daba Modibo Keïta part of the team.
Sport is enriched by the personalities who take part, and the African medal hopefuls have plenty of characters among them. Take Botswana’s Amantle Montsho for a start. When she was 12 years old, her grandfather told her she ran like a boy, but her father allowed her to stick to her running style. She is now the reigning 400-meter world champion and could secure Botswana’s first Olympic medal.
Triumph over adversity is also theme of South Africa’s 800-meter champion, Caster Semenya, who was subjected to a series of gender tests after her victory at the World Championships in Berlin in 2009. She was toppled, faced the possibility of never competing again and was humiliated. Now she has bounced back to qualify for London Olympics, with a point to prove.
Wania Monteiro is Cape Verde’s rhythmic gymnast, an unusual category for an African athlete. She was the country’s flagbearer in Beijing. Benjamin Boukpeti is the holder of Togo’s only Olympic medal—a bronze in the slalom canoe K-1 class.
Angola’s basketball team is the top ranked team in Africa.
Molla Getachew is the only member of Ethiopia’s team who is not a runner. He is a fly-weight boxer and does not even own his own pair of gloves, but will compete using borrowed ones from the gym. Malawi will have a 14-year-old swimmer, Zarra Pinto, while the Ugandans have the continent’s best badminton player in their ranks, Edwin Ekiring.
Somalia is only able to send two athletes: one male, one female, both runners. Abdinasir Saeed and Samiyo Yusuf hope their courage at the games can repair their country’s war-damaged image.
<div id="attachment_803" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-803" class="size-large wp-image-803" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/122834516_10-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA &#8211; AUGUST 29: Amantle Montsho of Botswana celebrates with her country&#8217;s flag after winning the women&#8217;s 400 metres final during day three of the 13th IAAF World Athletics Championships at the Daegu Stadium on August 29, 2011 in Daegu, South Korea. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)</div>
Moussambani made records for all the wrong reasons in 2000, but there are some African athletes looking to write their names in Olympic history in London. Some of them are searching for milestones of endurance. Angolan long-distance runner Joäo N’Tyamba is hoping to become the first male athlete to compete in seven Olympic Games.
Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry will aim to win her third 200-meter backstroke after she successfully defended her title in Beijing, an achievement that saw many Zimbabwean babies christened ‘Goldmedal’ in her honor.
Then there are the achievements that represent personal growth. Brimin Kipruto, Kenya’s 3,000-meter steeplechase runner, completed the distance in the second fastest time ever, something he will want to better. Keninisa Bekelel holds the world record and Olympic record for both the 5,000 and 10,000-meter events. He too will want to better this by living up to the mantra of top athletes: I am my own biggest competitor.

Go Africa!

In the game of life, there are always seats reserved for fame, fortune, luck and divine intervention. Add grace and fortitude to the mix and you’ll get a great rags-to-riches story. This has been the run of play so far for Kanu Nwankwo, the Nigerian soccer star who has written his name across world football.
In his 35 years, Nwankwo has become a shining star; a poor boy from the streets who became a global champion and authentic African hero. Now in the twilight of his career, he plays out his footballing days with English club Portsmouth. He is also a devoted husband and father of three, who is fashioning himself into a savvy investor in Nigeria. His £10,000 a week for kicking a ball are being poured into real estate, the hospitality industry, art, photography and philanthropy.
On the soccer field, Nwankwo can do no wrong. His admirers cheer his moves on the field, expecting his every touch of the ball to lead to magic; easily forgiving him when he miskicks or falls down during one of his numerous tricky sorties goal. And when he howls or winces in pain on the pitch, they cry and howl in solidarity. When he scores and breaks into his peculiar two-finger salute and dance, swaying from side to side and flapping his arms in jubilation, they laugh and fall in love with him all over again. That’s blind loyalty for you. Crazy, but that’s what loyal devotees of the game do for their gods.
“Papillo”, as he is fondly called by his fans, is adored by soccer enthusiasts from across Africa and worshipped in his homeland. A level head and obvious sense of propriety off the field is earning him more respect.
Nwankwo’s posh and polished lifestyle is a far cry from his early days. Surrounded by the social accessories of achievement—security guards, butlers, personal masseurs and hairstylists, mansions in the ritzy parts of Lagos
and London, first class air travel, chauffeur-driven SUVs and sedans, you get the picture—he maintains an easy, friendly mien. “I always remember how and where I started,” he says during his FORBES AFRICA interview.
Nwankwo and his three siblings grew up in eastern Nigeria. His older brother, the original “Papillo”, also played soccer in secondary school, until a knee injury shattered his career.
So “Papillo’s brother”, as Nwankwo was then known, gradually earned the name through sheer soccer brilliance, playing his way out of his rustic beginnings into the bright lights.
“My parents were not rich but they were modest, hardworking people,” he told FORBES AFRICA. “They always encouraged us to work hard, pray and do our possible best in whatever we were doing,” he says.
“They never discouraged me from playing football. It’s kind of funny, but everyone believed in me then… I was always winning, throughout my primary and secondary school days. I was always being picked to play for our school teams and later representing my state in age group competitions, and I was always team captain.”
His natural talent for the game earned him many friends early in life, and of course, some extra cash.
“I was having fun, going to school and making some money from football; everyone wanted me to play for their team,” he says.
One of his first clubs, semi-professional Federal Works, used to send a scout to fetch him from home and seek his parents’ permission ahead of their weekend fixtures.
“So I used my talent to support my upkeep…I used the money to buy clothes and books,” he says.
Talent always travels. He didn’t stay at Federal Works, where he scored nine times in 30 games, for too long. Richer, bigger clubs noticed him. In 1992, he laced his boots for Nigerian club side Iwuanyanwu Nationale, playing for slightly over a year before signing for AFC Ajax of Amsterdam for €207,047.
“Ajax was where I had my first taste of international pro football and became a man, soccer-wise. My dream of playing professional football abroad had come true.
“I was happy… It was also a difficult time for me. Suddenly, I found myself in Europe. Everything was new and strange–the environment, the food, the weather, the people, the culture, but I had no choice but to cope,” he says.
Beyond these niggling issues, his star shone brightly at Ajax. His skills matured as the team won three Dutch league titles, the UEFA Champions League trophy, the UEFA Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.
Back home, he was captain of the “Dream Team”—the name of Nigeria’s soccer team that travelled to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Nwankwo helped to demolish soccer giants Brazil and Argentina, winning Nigeria’s first-ever gold medal from Olympic soccer.
A promising future beckoned. He was young, at the top of his game and famous—the perfect blend of talent and tactical discipline. Football and fortune featured in his
future plans.
Just before the 1996 Atlanta Games, Internazionale Milan had shown serious interest in the young man. That summer, for about $4.7 million, Ajax released Nwankwo to the Italian Serie A club. A few weeks later, in Rome, disaster struck. A medical examination revealed he had a potentially life-threatening heart defect.
His reaction was disbelief and denial. Nwankwo and many of his fans were in shock. He had no family history of heart disease. He wondered how the ailment could have been undetected by his previous clubs. He sought varied medical opinions, hoping to debunk the diagnosis.
“Finally, when I realized that ‘oh yes, I may not play football anymore’, I knew that I still had a lot in me. I just put myself in God’s hands. At that time, I was like, well, okay God is going to do it for me. Doctors said I could fix the heart problem later on, but I would not be able to play football. Or, I could do corrective surgery right away and see how things turn out. I felt it was better for me to do the operation rather than wait to do it later. It was the lowest point for me in my career,” he says.
The rest of the story is part of the Nwankwo legend. He had successful heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in the USA in November 1996, recovered well and was back on the practice pitch six months later. “Coming back from that episode was wonderful, you know; I had to be tough, but growing up as a kid toughened me up, so my background growing up in Nigeria helped, it gave me hope that I can achieve under whatever circumstances,” he says.
Nwankwo is forever grateful to Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti for his support during this period of his career.
“Moratti and the rest of the Inter Milan team were fully behind me, they didn’t once stop paying me… they were constantly praying for me to come back. I wish every club president was like him; that’s a huge lesson in loyalty for the rest of the sports world,” he says.
Going under the knife to fix a faulty heart artery did not in any way affect Nwankwo’s football wizardry. He stayed with Inter Milan for another year, and moved on to Arsenal in 1999, playing with panache for the English club for the next five seasons. He has also played for other English sides— West Bromwich Albion and Portsmouth, signing a new three-year contract with the latter in August 2010.
Nwankwo’s illustrious international soccer career with Nigeria spanned 16 years at the national team level and 21 years at the club level. He is clearly one of Nigeria’s most celebrated footballers, with a Nigeria Premier League trophy; three Dutch League titles; a UEFA Champions League medal; a UEFA Cup medal; one English Premier League Cup; three English FA Cups; an Olympic gold medal; and the FIFA U-17 title to his name. He has also featured in several FIFA World Cups and African Cup of Nations tournaments.
He was voted CAF African Footballer of the Year in 1996 and 1999, and the BBC African Footballer of the Year in 1997 and 1999.
Nwankwo succeeded teammate and friend Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha as captain of Nigeria’s national team, the Super Eagles, between 2006 and 2010. He won 86 caps and scored 13 goals for his country and is the joint most capped Nigerian player of all time alongside mid-field maestro, the late Muda Lawal.
He holds the record for most substitute appearances in English Premier League history, appearing from the bench 118 times. As the season came to a close, Portsmouth was struggling to avoid relegation at the bottom of the English Championship. Beset by financial problems, the future of the club is uncertain. Nwankwo says he will stick with Portsmouth through thick and thin.
Back home in Nigeria, there is much to do. Inspired by his near-tragic experience, he set up the Nwankwo Heart Care Foundation in 2000. Funded mainly by the soccer legend and a small coterie of friends, he says the foundation has sponsored over 450 indigent children from all over Africa for surgery in England, Israel and India over the last decade.
“I kind of carry the burden of Africa on my shoulders; everyone prayed for me when I was ill,” he tells FORBES AFRICA.
“We get letters from all over Africa. The demand for medical aid from across the continent is huge and our aim is to help any poor African kid who has any medical problem. It’s been very difficult raising funds.”
His grand vision for the foundation is to have specialist hospitals for kids in several African cities. “It’s a very big task, a huge hurdle, and we hope that governments and the private sector in Africa and the Middle East can come to support our noble cause,” he says. The first of such facilities will be a N5 million cardiac hospital for under-12s in Abuja, Nigeria’s administrative and diplomatic capital.
“As a kid, I wanted to be the best man in football. But now, it’s a mixture. FIFA has given me a gold medal for my contributions to football, so I think that now, everyone will at least remember me as ‘Kanu the great footballer’. But what I would really like to be remembered for is as the man who gives hope and joy back to those who need it through our work at the Kanu Heart Care Foundation.”
<div id="attachment_795" style="width: 778px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-795" class="size-full wp-image-795" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/KX0P1956.jpg" alt="" width="768" height="1017" />Portsmouth &#8211; Portrait &#8211; kanu &#8211; 24/11/2006</div>
<h3>Kanu On African Football</h3>
Kanu Nwankwo bade farewell to international football with a testimonial game in April 2011. The match featured ex-Nigerian stars and Nwankwo’s colleagues and friends playing in Europe and Africa. 
Now, as a UNICEF Ambassador for Sports, he gets to go to big cities and to the nooks and crannies of the continent, preaching football, giving speeches at town hall meetings and inspiring young folks to attend school as well as play soccer. 
On football administration and management, and the future of the game in Africa, he says: “For me, the most important thing about football in Africa is the administration. The people in charge need to rev up their act. If we don’t have the right people in football, we will keep going round in circles. The game is undergoing an interesting time in Africa. No country is an underdog anymore in Africa… every team has to work very hard, football in Africa is growing so fast…” 
On the matter of foreign coaches versus indigenous coaches: “It all depends on management, but we just can’t sit down and condemn our local coaches. It’s all about constant retraining and refreshing. The football federations need to invest in their human resources; we have seen cases where our African coaches have done well even with little support, while foreign coaches who get all the attention and support of their FAs (football associations) fumble when it matters most.” 
He is modest about his net worth, maintaining that his life has been a blessed one. So which Kanu does he prefer to hang out with: is it Kanu the footballer, Kanu the philanthropist, Kanu the businessman or Kanu the family man? “I would say, Kanu the family man, because family comes first. My family is the key to whatever I have achieved in life. God has blessed me with a wonderful wife, Amarachi…our match is made in heaven.” 
His relationship with food can be described as indigenously continental. “I eat all types of food. I can’t stay for long without eating Nigerian food: I either go out to a Nigerian or African restaurant to eat it, or I buy the ingredients. I have to eat African food at least once every week. That’s why we tend to eat Chinese – it’s the closest thing to hot and spicy jollof rice.”

Braveheart

When meeting Benni McCarthy for the first time, it is hard not to size him up. Firstly, he is larger than life and says what is on his mind. Secondly, his size has been open to cruel national debate.
Benni McCarthy’s weight has been the staple of comedians, talk shows and Monday morning office gossip along the lines of Benni in a cafeteria rather than the 18-yard area.
“I am now finding it easy to stay in shape,” he says. “The weight issue really came up when I was living and playing in Europe and experimenting with all kinds of food that was new to me. Most of it clearly didn’t agree with my metabolic system, which resulted in me packing on the pounds, but now I know what works and that is how I’m keeping the excess weight off,” he continues.
By now it has become clear that McCarthy lives his life as an open book. I had expected the weight question to go down like a triple cheeseburger—which it didn’t, and next he was taking us on a tour of his Parkwood mansion and making jokes about his current team’s coach and ruminating about his future.
“I think that I am fitting in well at Orlando Pirates. For me, coming back home was not necessarily because I had no other options—it was mostly for the purpose of giving back to the community that made me the international star that I became,” he says of his 14-year spell in international soccer.
“I am finding the level of discipline with the players to be of a lower quality here than at the clubs in Europe, though, and most times you find that a lot of players aren’t as dedicated or as excited to be on the field representing the country’s biggest teams. But the pace of the game and all the other technical elements are up there with the best worldwide,” he says.
McCarthy is the only South African football player to ever win the UEFA Champion’s League. His former team, FC Porto, won in 2004, thanks to his 20 goals in 23 matches, plus a golden hat-trick in the final. McCarthy had a strange career at Porto. He scored in 11 matches for FC Porto in 2002 and left them only because the club could no longer afford him. They bought him back for €8 million ($10.5 million) a year later and McCarthy went on to win the UEFA Golden Boot.
Besides his uncanny ability to find the back of the net, McCarthy’s list of achievements would make even the most jaded critic realize that he is the real deal. He was the first soccer player in the world to feature on the cover of TIME magazine; he still holds the record of international goals by a South African and is Bafana Bafana’s all-time top scorer with 31 goals for his country.
McCarthy’s time spent in Europe wasn’t all roses. As he reminisces, he tells a chilling tale of rabid racism among Spanish supporters.
“For quite a while, my skin color became the bane of my existence. There were times when some fans would throw banana peels onto the stadium as I went in, and I still remember very vividly how they used to also make monkey sounds when I walked onto the pitch,” says McCarthy.
After enduring the hatred for months, McCarthy came up with a technique to block out all the hatred.
“Whenever I would encounter racism off the field, I would always take out a wad of cash and either burn it or tear it up right in front of the perpetrators. That was my way of rubbing it into their faces: you hate me, yet you still come to my games, effectively making me richer,” McCarthy quips.
McCarthy does have money to burn. His home drips with it.
“Growing up in Hanover Park in the Cape Flats of Cape Town, I never knew that it was possible that I could achieve so much, and make the kind of money that I made just by kicking a ball around. I know what it is to be poor, and the fact that I do not want to return to that has made me very wise in the way I handle my finances,” explains McCarthy.
“There are too many stories about ex-footballers going back home and becoming dead broke. I understand the reason behind why that happens: you go overseas as a teenager, get access to more money than you ever thought possible in a very short time and it gets to your head. It also becomes very hard to resist the lure of the football star’s lifestyle, which famously entails hard partying, bling and lots of beautiful women with expensive tastes. Add to that the bad friends that surround you and the fact that there isn’t much financial education that was given to you before you found yourself in that position,” he says.
McCarthy maintains that his family, which consists of his mother, three daughters, a steady girlfriend from Scotland and a baby on the way, have kept him focused on making financial decisions that will ensure that everyone gets to keep the lifestyle that he has worked for.
“I have six properties in Europe, a couple of houses in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and I am in the process of starting a business as a property developer—focusing on building luxury apartments for the growing middle class,” he says.
The Maserati and Bentley parked in the front drive shows McCarthy isn’t always parsimonious.
“You know how it is with us guys and how we love our toys… I do admit that I have a serious weakness for sports cars, and I am a keen collector of top-of-the-range watches… so basically, I collect houses, sports cars and Rolexes,” he gushes.
If the rumor that he earns around R500,000 ($64,000) a month at Orlando Pirates is true, then McCarthy doesn’t have much to worry about.
“I hope to play for one or two more seasons, then retire from football for good. I have been very fortunate in that my career hasn’t been marred by injury or anything that I can’t handle, so I look forward to one day being on the level of my all-time icon, Jomo Sono,” he says.
Benni McCarthy may have come a long way from his roots in the Cape Flats, but he has not forgotten his roots or the ball artistry of one of his illustrious predecessors. Legend has it that Jomo Sono left his wedding reception to take the field for Pirates, who were losing, to score goals for victory. Surely, McCarthy would have done the same.

Category: Sport

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