Celebrity foot-age

As the Olympic Games open in London, Britain, today, Kenya, as a ‘running nation’, will be expected to haul in a trolley of medals, TONY MOCHAMA unveils our running celebrities.

All Olympic Games leave behind, in their wake, triumphs and heartbreaks, heroes and villains, and a legacy that — for better or worse — follows the participants back home, sometimes until their dying day.

Rudisha and Pamela. [Picture: STAFFORD ONDEGO]

Even as we expect much from the likes of Vivian Cheruiyot by way of Olympic glory in 2012, here is a quartet of Olympiad style champions whom the last Olympics at the Birds’ Nest in Beijing, China, four years ago, irreversibly shaped: -

The Good: Janeth Jepkosgei.

After overthrowing the four-time Olympic champion, Maria Mutola aka ‘Maputo Express’ at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006, and then in the athletes’ meeting the following year, Olympic glory was expected of Janeth Jepkosgei in the Birds’ Nest Olympics of 2008.

After all, Olympic dreams had formed Janeth’s personality from the time she was a good, obedient and lightning fast little girl in the small village of Kabirirsang village, five kilometres from Kapsabet — and it is a long road from Eldoret to global capitals like Peking.

Long and lithe, with flowing hair and a100 watt smile, the ‘Eldoret Express’ as the press dabbed the much-feted Janeth, was the perfect face for Safaricom Sports-Woman of the year in 2007.

Although she got a mere Sh125, 000 for that, itself a quarter of the half million the Government gave her for her Melbourne exploits, and one eighth of the million Tusker gave her for its Permit Meet, the Beijing Olympics were to be her global launch pad.

Martin Keino of Keino Sports Marketing told this writer that he really believed in Janeth’s ‘ Face-of-Big-Brand Value’ due to those comely features and confident posture.

And who can disagree, when too many of our world beaters seem to specialise in running at blistering pace, only to ‘un-wow’ us with big gobs of spit, muttering ineloquently into the microphone “nashukuru Mungu” then looking dazed on the podium as the national anthem plays, and ‘flaggy’ wave?

At Birds’ Nest in 2008, though, it was a new phenomenon of nature that took the 800m gold (we’ll see who in a bit) as JJ settled for silver. But for Kenya’s beauty queen of the track, London 2012 represents another bite at the beautiful, elusive, Olympic apple.

The Brand: David Rudisha.

Tall, lanky, and with an electrifying pace that ate up 800m in 1:41:74 (that’s almost 30 km per hour, for any Math geek reading this) to set up this year’s fastest time in Paris, France, Rudisha looks set to return with a gold medal from London ... but he has never been to an Olympics!

In 2008, he was down-and-out with injury. But forty years before Beijing, another Rudisha won the silver medal in that race in the 1968 Olympics, held in Mexico; Daniel Rudisha, the father of David Rudisha.

In Kenya, David is already a brand name with his signature Kiwi advert that goes “File fyatu fyako finafyo ng’ara” (the way your shoes shine, is the way you shine!), but victory in the London Olympics would add a special lustre to his already shiny resume.

And David Rudisha knows it. Says he:  “It has always been my dream to win the gold medal at an Olympics’ games. It has always been my dream to stand at the podium in an Olympics’ stadium, and hear the Kenya national anthem being played ...”

Run, Baby, Run;Pamela Jelimo.

She was literally an ‘Olympic baby’ when she took the world by storm in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, running away with the 800m gold medal as the unstoppable ‘Kapsabet Express’ (in the year Castor Semenya was no threat as her gender was still being investigated by the IAAF).

To show it was no fluke, Pamela Jelimo then ran away with the $1 million (Sh78 million at the time) Golden League Jackpot in 2008 to bag the biggest monetary prize ever in Kenya’s history.

Born into a broke family of six, where two of her elder siblings dropped out of school for lack of fees, Pamela was a mobile human dairy shop, running everywhere to sell milk (for school fees) to avoid befalling the same sad fate.

The determined young lady was spotted by her headmaster Daniel Maru who got her the shoes and tracksuits required to join a distance running academy in Eldoret, and hence began her rise to glory that would send her to the Olympiad pinnacle.

It’s no wonder that after her 2008 successes, Jelimo heavily invested in her Koyo Dairy Farm, bought a few heavy-terrain 4WD vehicles, but still remained a police constable.

Her humility did not save her from humiliation the following year (2009) when she began losing races like a drooping fly, falling to sixth in a race meet in Rabat, then finishing dead last in Eugene, Oregon, USA.

‘Gone, Baby, Gone,’ some sports writers thought — and wrote her off as wrangles involving her Golazo Sports Management team emerged.

But in 2012, Pamela Jelimo re-emerged, like the proverbial phoenix. And for Pulsers salivating over the thought of moneybags bila sweat, Pamela’s Sunday-to-Sunday regimen is instructive ... and brutal!

On a typical Friday, for example, Pamela Jelimo says she wakes up before dawn for an eight kilometres run, has a nutritional breakfast and rest before a six kilometre noon-time run, then a light lunch, relaxation, then gym at sunset for stretching exercises, push-ups, sit-ups and plyometric ...”

In life, as in the Olympics, there ain’t no sweet without the sweat.

The Ugly; the late Samuel Wanjiru.

If he were alive today, chances are Samuel Wanjiru would be in London today, to try and replicate his Olympic success of Beijing, four years ago.

But he is not. Samuel Wanjiru died in a suspicious ‘fall’ off the first floor balcony of his ostentatious mansion in the posh Muthaiga estate in Nyahururu area.

Standard Sports Editor Omulo Okoth recently wrote of the huge spending, binge drinking, womanising and road accidents that characterised the athlete’s last days.

Author Frits Conjin in his book about Wanjiru called Doodloper (Dutch for ‘Death Runner’) wrote of  “these sons of farmers who suddenly become sons of fame, and need to be better educated to avoid too much drinking  (booze) and too much womanizing (boobs) ...”

With money pouring in, in astronomical appearance fees of Sh15 million to Sh20 million, Samuel Wanjiru would jump into his Land Cruiser, Mark X, RAV 4 or the Range Rover, and join an entourage of cousins and fair-weather friends as well as hangers-on in weekend long benders at places like Jim-Rock Club in Nyahururu, as he listened to Kikuyu pop music with the posse.

As the new Olympics hits London City, sadly, the legacy that Wanjiru has going on is one of a bitter mother (Hannah Wanjiru), wife under a cloud of suspicion (Triza Njeri), old track soul-mate (Mary Wacera) and baby mama (Judy Wambui) in legal drama over his multi-million shilling estates — one of which is ironically called the Birds Nest Apartments.