Our sports champions make us proud and teach a few things

Kenyan athletes registered a sterling performance at this year’s IAAF World Athletics Championships in Beijing. The championships held at the Bird’s Nest stadium inspire me to focus on the Black Swan concept.

A Black Swan was considered a rare bird that was sighted after people had come to believe that all swans were white. Similarly a black swan event is one that challenges convectional thinking hence creating a paradigm shift.  

Black swan events are difficult to predict. If you were to ask where the next earthquake is likely to happen in the world, the likely guess would be a place where it has already happened in the recent past. Most predictions are based on historical facts.

While history tends to repeat itself, new history is always being made. At the athletics championships many predicted that David Rudisha would bring back the gold in the 800m race as his name and history suggests a white swan situation. Few would have put a bet on Nicholas Bett winning the 400m hurdles gold– a black swan.  

The other black swan was gold for Kenya won by Julius Yego in Javelin. Yego learnt how to throw the Javelin through a YouTube coach, earning him the title, the YouTube athlete, and becoming brand ambassador for Orange Kenya’s Internet solutions promotion.

Kenyans on Twitter grabbed the opportunity to express themselves based on Yego’s win of the 15-year world record throw. Hash tag #ThingsYegoCanThrow highlighted the things that Yego could help Kenya get rid of to make the world a better place.

The list was filled with facts, wishes, dreams and fun. The direction to throw was also implied, with prices of goods and the exchange rate of the Kenya shilling to the dollar being thrown back to the past status.

Ex-partners were being thrown back or away completely depending on the nature of memories. Poorly performing Premier League football teams were to be thrown to the top of the rankings.

Yego was also told to throw away all social evils, enemies of development, poverty, insecurity and fake people.

There was even a meme of Yego throwing away both spears from the national flag to make it spearless.

Apart from making Kenyans proud, Yego and the other medal winners and contestants inspired us to keep working hard to be the best. Without practice and discipline we achieve less than our full potential.

Discipline enables us to stay focused; without it we can’t win a single medal or get the ticket to participate in life, business or sports.

In addition we can learn constructive use of the Internet from the YouTube athlete. Young people in particular are misusing the Internet to watch things like pornography, which has been found to lowers one’s IQ.

What would you wish that Yego would throw to make you a better person?

Mr Ngahu is the marketing director of SBO Research.
E-mail: [email protected], Twitter @bngahu