INTERESTING REPORT ON THE FATE OF KENYA’S GREATEST COACHES WHO REMAIN POORLY PAID TEACHERS AS SOME OF THEIR STUDENTS GRADUATE TO BECOME MILLIONAIRES.
April 21, 2007
Posted to the web April 23, 2007
David Macharia
“The Nation”
Nairobi
Kenyan athletes’ lifestyle change immediately they board planes to race outside the country.
Some come back after a few meetings abroad and move to better houses in upper-class neighbourhoods - mostly away from their rural homes. Others start driving around in cars that make heads turn.
The new lifestyle is usually the first indication that the sportsmen and women are about to start talking in terms of millions when doing their budgets.
What most people do not realise is that behind the owners of the fast legs, flashy cars and millions are humble people who have seen many of their protégés become millionaires.
You will find these modest men holding stop-watchers and giving instructions where the athletes are training, or just walking in town and occasionally waving in response to the hooting of cars driven by youthful people wearing caps and oversize sun-glasses.
These are the coaches who have produced the millionaires and yet they have remained humble but contented.
Fifty-five-year-old Mike Kosgei sums it up all when he says that they are like teachers who see most of their students go on to acquire university degrees while they remain lowly teachers.
Another coach, Brother Colm O’Connell, says an athletics coach is like an investment consultant who advises others how to make money, but remains just an adviser.
Jimmy Beauttah says, however, that coaches draw happiness and satisfaction from seeing their charges climb to the highest point of success, both sportswise and financially.
The three are among the most respected athletics coaches in the country, and their former charges sound like who is who among the Kenyan world medal winners and record-breakers.
Kosgei started coaching in 1985, and among the top athletes he handled are five-time world cross-country winner John Ngugi, two-time winner William Sigei who went on to break the 10,000 metres world track record, and Paul Tergat who currently holds the world’s best time in marathon.
“I think everybody who had been running has made an achievement,” he says. “You cannot go back and say this man looks the same as before he started running.”
Asked if he is millionaire himself since some of the athletes he trained are, Kosgei quickly answers: “I’m not a millionaire, but I am a teacher, and when you are a teacher you expect some of your students to get degrees, become ministers and doctors, but you remain a teacher.”
But one thing that makes Kosgei happy is that although the athletes have much more money than he, they still respect him immensely.
Beauttah has handled such high flying runners like world 5,000 metres champion Benjamin Limo. And most of them treat him with a lot of respect.
Kosgei who wants to coach until he is 70, does not think the runners let the money get into their heads. He does not remember any one of theme who disobeyed him, world champions or Olympic gold medal winners.
The business world
O’Connell says athletics coaching is like being in the business world where you teach people how to invest their money, knowing that one day they will be richer than you.
The coach, who is famed for being behind the athletics success enjoyed by St Patrick high school Iten, thinks Wilson Kipketer of Denmark is the most successful in terms of winning.
He has a lot of good words to say about those who have succeeded in managing their own business, such as former Commonwealth 800 metres champion Japheth Kimutai.
The coach believes in an athlete’s gradual development, both in talent and financially.
But is O’Connell a millionaire like some of the athletes he handles?
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“Very far from it,” he says, adding that it is not his intention to become one.
Being a teacher by profession, he says, his main aim in handling the young athletes is to see them grow into people who can manage their lives, businesses and finances. This is why he emphasises education for all the athletes he handles.
But he feels the athletes have not exploited the money market in their investments. He is happy though that the runners are now being advised to stop the culture of investing in real estate and vehicles only.
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O’Connell and Beauttah feel that the worst scenario in athletics comes when people approach it with money in mind. Managers who approach it this way tend to behave like they are managing a production line, “because they use and dump,” they say.
At 50, O’Connell says he at times feels like quitting, but always has the urge to go on because the young people keep coming to him.
“I always have my feet among young athletes because I am an educationist and I am always receiving young people,” he says.
Beauttah started coaching in the late 1970s and has since handled such runners as Shem Kororia from Mt Elgon and Kisii’s Fred Onyancha, and later had a large group of successful athletes who used to train in Nyahururu.
In the group were both Kenyans and Tanzanians among them runners such as world 5,000 metres champion Benjamin Limo, Daniel Komen and Moses Kiptanui - all of Kenya - and John Yuda and Fabiano Joseph of Tanzania.
He says most members of the group he had in Nyahururu are now proud owners of commercial buildings in Eldoret after making good money from running.
“Kuna msemo kwamba tenda wema uende zako (There is saying that says do good and go away - don’t talk about it). I believe it is God’s arrangement since the coaching talent I have came from him and I believe he has plans for me,” he says.
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Beauttah and Kosgei each have four children, but none has shown any interest in the sport. The coaches want their offspring to decide on their own what sports they wish to pursue.
Since O’Connell, now a retired headmaster of St Patrick, began coaching in the late 1970s he has seen more than 100 of his charges become world beaters.
A short list of St Patrick graduates includes 1988 Olympic 1,500m champion Peter Rono, 800m world record holder Wilson Kipketer, former world steeplechase record holder Wilson Boit Kipketer and three-time Boston marathon champion Ibrahim Hussein, who is now the Athletics Kenya’s assistant secretary-general.