The 15th World Athletics Championship has ended in Beijing and, for many of us, what strikes us is, once more, the dominance of black athletes in the games. Black people form a minority of the human race. It is estimated that there are between 1.5 to 2 billion black people in the world, depending on how you define “black”. With the population of the world estimated at more than 7 billion in 2015, blacks form less than a third of the world’s population. But they won medals in Beijing far in excess of their share of the world’s population. In almost all of the final line-ups of the track events, whites were in a clear minority.
This has not always been so. Because of racism, blacks started being admitted to the big athletics stage very late in the history of the modern Olympics. Many of the “black nations” were colonies until the late 50s and couldn’t take part in the Olympics. The USA, which could have paraded blacks, discriminated against them. Blacks had a hard time competing with, and against, whites. There is the story of Hitler refusing to shake hands with Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This story has been shown to be untrue since Hitler didn’t shake hands with any of the winners on that day. But Hitler snubbed another black athlete, Cornelius Johnson, on the first day of the games when he left the stadium just before Johnson was to be honoured.
By the beginning of the 60s, many African and Caribbean states had gotten their independence and could present more blacks on the world stage. But whites still dominated in all events. Some blacks stuck out, though, like the Ethiopian, Abebe Bikila, who became the first black African to win an Olympic gold when he ran barefooted to win the Marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics. The current dominance of blacks started becoming most apparent after the fall of the Berlin wall. The communist countries stopped “manufacturing” super athletes as a means of showing off communist excellence. At the same time, athletics became more and more professionalised with huge money for those who excelled. Poor blacks seized the opportunity and have not looked back since. They now no longer face rampant discrimination.
The myth has rather now been created that blacks excel in sports and countries with black populations, in search of national glory, promote them. Today, the black dominance is almost total. Just look at the final line ups in all the track events at the recently concluded games. For some decades now, the US 4x100 team has been made up exclusively of blacks. Team Great Britain & NI in Beijing had two blacks, one white and a guy who looked mulatto in the relay. Note the happiness of Dafne Schippers, the white Dutch girl who placed second in the 100 metres final. She stuck her neck out of the black faces in the 200 meters final too, running a great second part of the distance to beat Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson at the tape setting a new championship record of 21.63 seconds. Schippers had every reason to be overjoyed. She was playing in a league that is no longer dominated by her race!
The African performance has been dominated by Kenya which was the best performer overall with 16 medals including 7 gold. Kenya has always performed well in distance events but this year, they took gold in two “non-traditional” Kenyan events. The more surprising one was Julius Yego’s monster throw of the javelin. The 92.72 meters he cast is the third longest in history. It was a spectacular performance. The other Kenyan surprise is Nicolas Bett’s gold in the 400 m hurdles. There was, actually, a second Kenyan in the finals of this event. Boniface Mucheru came in fifth, outside the medals zone but still a merited position. But a Ugandan had been there before Bett. John Akii-Bua gladdened every African heart when he won gold in the 400 metres hurdles in the Munich Olympic Games of 1972.
The other Kenyan medals came in the events they are noted for: gold medals in the Women’s 10,000 metres, Men and Women’s 3000 steeplechase, and men’s 800 as well as 1500 metres. They made a clean sweep of the Men’s steeplechase, taking the first four places! For Ezekiel Kemboi who won the event, it was his fourth straight championship victory – a spectacular performance even by Kenyan standards! The steeplechase (jumping over mountains and streams) seems to be the Kenyan event par excellence. They had five Silver medals in 10,000 (M), 3000 steeplechase (M), 1500 (W), 5000 metres (M) and the Women’s marathon. Their three bronze medals came in the Steeplechase (M), 10,000 metres (M) and the Women’s 800 metres.
Ethiopia was the second best African performer with two gold in the women’s 1500 metres and the marathon. They also took silver medals in the women’s marathon and men’s 5,000 metres. A bronze each in the men’s and women’s 5,000 completed their haul of eight medals all in their traditional long distance events. South Africa is the only other African country with a gold medal (in the men’s 400 metres). They also took a bronze in the men’s 200 metres – two of the most keenly competed events. Egypt (silver in the men’s Javelin), Tunisia (silver in the women’s steeplechase), a bronze for Morocco (Women’s 1,500 metres and a bronze medal for Uganda in the men’s marathon completed Africa’s total medals haul of 31.
Kenya topped the medals table. But the IAAF also has a placing table where points are awarded to the first eight finishers in each event. The USA (which also won the greatest number of medals - 18) tops this table with 214 points far ahead of Kenya which scored 173 points. Jamaica comes third with 132 points. This shows that the USA still has the best breath of performance with relatively more people doing well across a greater variety of events than any other country.
The African disappointment can be said to be Nigeria –home to the greatest number of blacks on earth. The only Nigerian sounding names you saw were the ones running for other countries: Femi Ogunode for Qatar in the finals of the 200 metres men; Christine Ohuruogu who came last in the finals of the women’s 400 metres, running for Team Britain. The best Nigerian performers were Doreen Amata who was in the high jump final, Tosin Oke was 8th in the triple jump (which, in my days in school, used to be called Hop, Step, and Jump – and for very good reason). One thing can be learned from the Nigerian debacle: it takes more than just being black to do well in athletics.
As for the Ghanaians, if you watched the games on European TV, you will conclude we didn’t take part. Did we? We are concentrating too much on football and, to a lesser extent, boxing. Why are we so poor in other sporting events?
The performance of the African continent can be contrasted with those of the small black Caribbean nations that have done so well. What is the secret behind Jamaica’s success? This is a country of less than 3 million inhabitants, 90 per cent of whom are black – like Ghana black! This tiny country won twelve medals, including seven gold, to take second spot on the medals’ table ahead of USA (population 320 million). All Jamaica’s medal winners are black. They won the races for the fastest man and woman on earth. They won the 100 metres relays for both men and women. There were four Jamaicans in the final line-up of the women’s 400 metres. Incidentally, the best of them came up “only” third. No wonder they easily won the 400 metres relay.
All the best performing small nations that won medals presented black athletes. Grenada (population 106,000) won bronze in the men’s 400 metres; Bahamas (population under 400,000) won silver and bronze in the women’s and men’s 400 metres respectively, Trinidad and Tobago (population 1.3 million) took the silver in the men’s 400 metres relay and bronze in the women’s 100 metres.
But what would have happened if all those who left Africa to win medals for other countries had stayed put in Africa? Mo Farah’s two gold medals for the UK come readily to mind. No, he may not have performed so well if he had stayed put in his native Somalia which could not even present a team.
Today, Europe is seeing a wave of economic migrants trying to enter the continent through any means possible. Europe doesn’t want them. But if Europe should choose among these people, it will take the best athletes, the brilliant young and others who could have done well for the continent. Mo Farah can be proud of giving something back to his adoptive country. Not many of the new migrants can say that.
The surprises in the just concluded games include the under-performance of traditional giants, Russia, Germany, and France. Even the USA did not come up to its usual standards. The Chinese pulled up a surprise in the sprints. They had one man in the finals of the 100 metres and took silver in the 4 x 100 metres relay.
Other interesting tit-bits for me include the return of Caster Semenya. The 800 metres world champion in Berlin (2009) and runner up in the London Olympics was dogged by physical injuries in the past three years as well as the psychological ones of having her gender questioned. She came last in the semi-finals of her race in Beijing. But Semenya is only 24 and hopes to make another come back in Rio next year.
The rivalry between Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin was played up by many reporters who were happy that Usain Bolt came up tops. Gatlin’s reputation is still being overshadowed by his two year-ban for drugs. I read somewhere that he has his roots in Ghana and a half brother who is still there.
Have you noticed how there were hardly any false starts in the sprints? These days, no one is allowed a false start. Make one and you are disqualified. These professional athletes have trained so well that they leave the blocks only after the signal. The games now flow more smoothly than before. But I have wondered why the athletes often slow down when they are crossing the line. They do this even in the sprints. One would think they would wind down only after the line. Some of them even raise their hands in victory before crossing the line. Another thing that struck me was all the many female black athletes with long flowing hair. Why are black women so jealous of long hair?
And so the black dominance continues. There was a US athlete who was once quoted as saying he believed white men could do as well as blacks in sports but the best of them are on Wall Street. He is right. In the fields of human endeavour that really matter for the world, blacks are in a minority. When the Nobel Prizes are awarded for excellence in various fields, no black faces are in the line-up. But in sports and entertainment, we are tops. If only we could do similarly well in other fields…
Kofi Amenyo (kofi.amenyo@yahoo.com)
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