I just looked at Korir's Instagram and I see that the Olympic champion has just 6,000 followers. The average 20 year old Ukrainian woman has more than that.
It may seem a superficial way of measuring things, but the truth is that you have to be a little crazy to think a shoe company will pay $500K to a guy that only 6,000 people care enough about to even follow on Instagram.
I wrote this because this is the answer I got from an old official of the frma in twitter (last month) when I questioned him about the likely use of drugs in the preceding years.
Coevett wrote:
I just looked at Korir's Instagram and I see that the Olympic champion has just 6,000 followers. The average 20 year old Ukrainian woman has more than that.
It may seem a superficial way of measuring things, but the truth is that you have to be a little crazy to think a shoe company will pay $500K to a guy that only 6,000 people care enough about to even follow on Instagram.
I mean this is fair. If you choose an African athlete, often they will have a less affluent fanbase that is less present on social media. I don’t think anyone would suggest that Grant Fisher and Mburu be paid the same by their brands even with similar ability. I think it’d be naive to think Korir doesn’t know this as well. But that being said, it sounds like he had a former agent who he felt was possibly giving him over to Nike at a discount. He’d be far from the first or the last athlete in their mid-20s to feel this way about Nike or an agent. He bet on himself and now I suspect he will get a deal he feels is fair.
THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:
He’d be far from the first or the last athlete in their mid-20s to feel this way about Nike or an agent. He bet on himself and now I suspect he will get a deal he feels is fair.
^ Spot on!