Why John Akii-Bua was the last natural Olympic gold winner and now medalists are made in science laboratories.

By Sam Akaki

Stephen Kiprotich may well be justified in pointing out that "the weather was too rainy and cold and I could not just keep up. It was too tricky. I fought on but that is the best I could do" (New Vision, Olympics: Kiprotich blames poor finish on weather, August 22).

But other Olympians, especially those the world's richest (G8) counties, who topped the Rio 2016 medal league table also performed in the same weather conditions! For example, the US, UK, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, France and South Korea, each won 46, 27,  26, 19, 17, 12,  10  and 9 gold medals in that order.

Even Kenya managed six gold medals. So what was the real reason why Kiprotich "could not just keep"? Rio 2016 was a competition between natural ability versus mechanical or chemical influences. 

Unlike in the 1972, when John Akii Bua won gold medal on his natural ability alone, today it is the financial ability of a country to pay for the latest performance enhancement technologies, which wins medals.  Where is the evidence?

In the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, when medals were still won on natural talents, Ethiopia lead the UK, winning two gold medals while the UK got only one gold medal. But 20 years later in Rio 2016, Ethiopia won only one gold medal while to UK collected a whopping 27 gold medals! 

This was because the UK spent over £320m (about sh18.4b) for each of the 67 medals won in Rio 2016. Uganda is unlikely to have spent even a tiny fraction of that amount on the entire Rio team, hence the failure to win a medal.

To put the matter in African context, the UK's £320m budget for Rio Olympics is about the same as Burundi's entire national budget for 2016/2017 financial year.

By contract, the UK and other developed countries are spending astronomical amounts to pay for the latest sports science, medicine and technology.  These are designed to simulate real-time participation in any Olympic event under all weather conditions in a given Olympics venue.

The basic purposes of these technologies are to optimise the Olympian's training programmes, maximise performance in competition and improve their health and wellbeing. These include giving Olympians personal physiotherapists, nutritionists and physiologists, who focus on enabling every Olympian to develop the techniques that reduce the incidence of avoidable injuries and illnesses.

Other essential items include legal and illegal sports performance enhancement drugs such as human growth hormones, stimulants, anabolic agents, smart drugs, cognitive enhancers, cannabinoids, narcotics, diuretics and drug-masking agents etc.

These drugs assist the Olympians in increasing their physical endurance, muscle recovery process, muscular size and strength and adrenal corticosteroid levels.  Other drugs are for losing body fat, improving aerobic exercise, preventing detection of banned substances.

Still other drugs are for reducing tiredness and increasing alertness, pain threshold, aggressiveness, competitiveness, responsiveness and creating a feeling of invincibility. The list is endless as long as a country or an individual Olympian can afford it.

It was because of the ability of the world's richest (G8) countries to pay for these expensive performance enhancement technologies, which is pricing Africa out of the games.  Note that less than 15 African countries sent a team to Rio!

The allure of Olympic medals and the financial rewards that follow have driven some countries and individuals to try and bend the law. For example, the entire Russian Para-Olympians athletes were excluded from Rio after a damning report found evidence of systematic state-sponsored doping programme.

Kenya, which took the highest number of gold medals in Africa, has also had a brush with the law. The national sprint coach, John Anzrah was sent home from Rio after giving a urine sample in the name of his fellow countryman Ferguson Rotich, who was contesting for the 800m race.

In another incident, a Kenyan Olympics team manager, Michael Rotich, was remanded in prison for four weeks pending investigations into allegation that he was prepared to warn coaches about drugs tests in return for £10,000 ($13,000).

At this increasing rate of the use of legal and illegal performance enhancement technologies, the world could be witnessing human robots winning all the Olympic medals in a few years, staring with Tokyo 2010. 

Against this background, Uganda and other developing countries, which would rather spend the £4,096,500 on schools and health centres, instead of training one Olympian, should demand for the return to the old Olympic Games based on natural talents alone, if we are to stand any chance of ever winning medals.

Alternatively, as wrote in the UK Guardian newspaper (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/17/olympic-wealth-gap-leaves-africa-behind) the United Nations should build in Africa, a continental Olympic training centre, equipped with the latest sport performance enhancement technologies."

Failing to achieve any of the above, African and other willing developing countries should form an alternative Olympics in which participants rely solely on natural talents.  After all, ancient Greeks who founded Olympics in the year 776 BC wanted it to be an Athletics festival in which Akii-Bua and the like would entertain the public without the help of mechanical or chemical influences.

The writer is the former independent Parliamentary candidate in the UK and now the Executive Director, African European Affairs,  London