OPINION: Kenya Should Prioritize Athlete’s Financial Welfare Beyond Title Competition – Capital FM

By Peter Gacheru, CEO IMG Kenya

Recently, the media has been awash with a grace to grass story of one of our athletes, once reverend in the tracks. Beatrice Murugi, a long-distance runner, built a professional career in Japan before a tendon injury brought her prolific career as a marathoner to a grinding halt.

Sadly, her story is not unique. Boxer Conjestina Achieng, athlete Delilah Asiago, Olympic champion John Ngugi, boxers Stephen Muchoki, Suleiman Bilali and David Munyasia, and runner Samuel Kiprop Chepkok have all, at different times, made headlines for the struggles that followed their years of glory.

Kenyan sportsmen and women are not the only ones affected. Mike Tyson earned hundreds of millions of dollars in the ring yet filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Allen Iverson, George Best and Boris Becker all watched fortunes slip away.

I recently listened to former AC Milan midfielder Rodney Strasser tell his story. Between the ages of 18 and 21, he bought four supercars, not the kawaida models at your local dealership. Then injury cut his career short. Today he regrets those purchases and says the money should have been invested to secure his future. He blames it on one thing – the absence of financial guidance.

Sport has an early retirement age, which comes even sooner with injury. It also consumes the best years of one’s youth. Between ages 20 and 30, professionals in other fields are doing internships and entry-level jobs, with retirement projected at 60. Athletes, by contrast, must peak at around 25 and plan to be done by age 35.

The longevity of an athlete’s career is unique and dependent on many factors such as strength, health, tactical and experience compensation. Not every professional athlete earns the big money we read about – many retire without ever landing an earth-shaking payday hence the real task for every athlete who turns profession is to convert eight to 15 years of sporting capital into financial and professional security for the next forty to fifty years of life.

But who should cushion our athletes from financial ruins and regression?

Our federations, clubs and teams pour their energy into one goal – preparing athletes to compete. Athletes like Conjestina lifted a sport few cared about, filled venues with fans and earned money for promoters, who moved on to the next rising star the moment she could no longer fight.

But it is time to change this cyclical pattern that shifts from one rising star to the other. Federations, clubs, camps and academies should build four things into their programmes.

Firstly, financial literacy should be offered from the first day of signing where they are taken through process such as budgeting, investing, contracts and tax with access to independent advisers rather than relegating such critical roles to relatives or agents who have vested stakes in the outcome.

Secondly, athletes should be advised to have parallel careers such as coaching certification, technical training and university studies should be scheduled around training such that an injury at 23 does not mean starting from scratch.

Thirdly, they should be guided or trained on ensuring they have protected savings in that a fixed share of the prize money and appearance fees they receive after major races is channeled into an investment plan or a retirement scheme that they cannot easily access or raid during their peak-earning years.

Lastly, mentorship from retired athletes and those who got it right or learned the hard way and recovered would share what no classroom can teach. These forums are what the clubs, federations should consider for the next generation of athletes.

These corrections and conversations are long overdue. It is not too late to start this conversation when an athlete is about to retire and has already spent their fortune on the high life and big cars.

Kenya rightly celebrates its sportsmen and women as national assets. We owe them more than a welcome parade at the airport. The best time to prepare an athlete for life after sport is the day they join a team. The next best time is now.

The writer is the CEO of IMG Kenya

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Capital FM.