2017 World 1500m champ Elijah Managnoi is doing dairy farming and planting beans to help make ends meat during Covid-19 crisis

Meat?

He must be taking some inspiration from his training partner Potato Tim.

Meet Loaf wrote:

Meat?

Eye sea what you did their.

Are these guys getting absolutely worked by agents/leeches? How can a guy that's been near the top of the world in the 1500 for the past 3 years not have enough saved to be able to live comfortably during this time?

Either he is exaggerating, being ripped off by agents/family/friends, or he simply doesn't want to touch any money he's earned in the past. I'm guessing it's 1 or 2.

The federation gets a cut. The agent get his cut. The coach gets his. Winnings are heavily taxed. At the end of the day the pie gets pretty sliced up.

Most Kenyans, rich or poor, tend to talk like this. Humility by showing empathy with “the struggle” is expected and comes naturally. Also, it’s always the understated “little money” amount regardless. So a wealthy new landowner would say something like: “Yes, I bought a small piece of land in the South Rift, so I can keep a couple of cows and grow a few vegetables for the Mrs”. In reality, it could be a large scale dairy farm with acres of horticulture for the export market.

Now, I’m not privy to Manangoi’s finances, and the Kenyan economy has been hit hard by COVID-19, nonetheless a casual glance at his social media and knowing about his penchant for SUVs would show he’s hardly struggling “to make ends meet”.

Rojo, since a not insignificant amount of your content is copy and pasted from Kenyan sites and outlets, I suggest hiring Kenyan editor for Letsrun would be best for you guys.

A World Champion sees his prize money disappear and his sponsorship money under threat due to the C virus. Now he has to do hard manual labor in order to survive.

Who would have thought it?

I posted a thread the other day on the financial implications of no races for 2 years (quite possible or even likely) and it got 2 or 3 replies.

Western athletes will get by. They can always make money from social media and the like. It's guys like the Manangois and potato Tim whose athletics careers are effectively over.

rojo wrote:

Anyone know how Centro's farm is coming along?

centro has a farm? what is he growing; pot?

You don't know what you're talking about.

ati nini wrote:

You don't know what you're talking about.

Maybe, in this case. That's why I asked.

I guess Tim and a lot of other elite Kenyans are covered because they were given (nominal) jobs for life by the Kenyan police or military.

British athletes will have to pray that they continue to get lottery funding, but likely the top Kenyans have fewer worries.

Meet Loaf wrote:

Meat?

It's a meat farm. Kenyans like their cattle.

This is a good reminder that East African runners are running to elevate their socioeconomic status. It is an avenue for a better life for them. Where as in America, distance running prospects could usually make more money in the work force.

This is a Super common practice. This is also why some EA runners kind of fade away after a short-ish career; they earned some decent money, bought a farm or business, and now they’re out. For example, If one of these runners wins, say, $50,000 USD at NYC Chicago or Boston, they take home most of that (minus agent fees and maybe some others) cash and it becomes a fortune in Kenyan Shillings.

Coevett wrote:

A World Champion sees his prize money disappear and his sponsorship money under threat due to the C virus. Now he has to do hard manual labor in order to survive.

Who would have thought it?

I posted a thread the other day on the financial implications of no races for 2 years (quite possible or even likely) and it got 2 or 3 replies.

Western athletes will get by. They can always make money from social media and the like. It's guys like the Manangois and potato Tim whose athletics careers are effectively over.

Honestly it sucks to see this - Tim and Elijah are actually contributing positively to society with their non running jobs but aren't getting anything from their sponsors. Most western pros right now are just bombarding social media with narcissistic posts online to satisfy their sponsors ... makes it hard to support them

Swerving wrote:

Are these guys getting absolutely worked by agents/leeches? How can a guy that's been near the top of the world in the 1500 for the past 3 years not have enough saved to be able to live comfortably during this time?

Either he is exaggerating, being ripped off by agents/family/friends, or he simply doesn't want to touch any money he's earned in the past. I'm guessing it's 1 or 2.

Bro. It's running.

Roughly .0349% of the entire world gives a flying f*ck about a 1500m race. The marketing dollars reflect that lack of interest.

It's not like he was starting point guard for the Lakers or QB1 for the Cowboys.

RunnersAreNerds wrote:

Swerving wrote:

Are these guys getting absolutely worked by agents/leeches? How can a guy that's been near the top of the world in the 1500 for the past 3 years not have enough saved to be able to live comfortably during this time?

Either he is exaggerating, being ripped off by agents/family/friends, or he simply doesn't want to touch any money he's earned in the past. I'm guessing it's 1 or 2.

Bro. It's running.

Roughly .0349% of the entire world gives a flying f*ck about a 1500m race. The marketing dollars reflect that lack of interest.

It's not like he was starting point guard for the Lakers or QB1 for the Cowboys.

I mean... no Bowerman TC athlete would have to work a real job in these times.. even if they are equal or slower than these guys. The money reflects their marketability (in the USA primarily), so race, social media presence, looks and gender play a bigger role than talent and results.

Here's an interesting article related to Kenyan finances. Some training camp organizer has agreed to give his athletes 10,000 Kenyan shillings a month during the Covid-19 crisis and they are thrilled about it. That's like $93 a month.

But the reason why they like that is that's close to the Kenyan average income. GDP per person in Kenya is right around $1300 per year now.

https://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athletics/Naivasha-camp-offers-stipend--virtual-race-prize-money-runners/1100-5537818-h6unqiz/index.html

Coevett wrote:

A World Champion sees his prize money disappear and his sponsorship money under threat due to the C virus. Now he has to do hard manual labor in order to survive.

Who would have thought it?

I posted a thread the other day on the financial implications of no races for 2 years (quite possible or even likely) and it got 2 or 3 replies.

Western athletes will get by. They can always make money from social media and the like. It's guys like the Manangois and potato Tim whose athletics careers are effectively over.

You'd like to think that but I very much doubt Western athletes will be in a better position financially than African ones through this time.

Many athletes in Western countries unfortunately have to work second jobs anyway regardless of Covid-19, athletics doesn't pay much and relative to the UK cost of living it doesn't work.

I remember stories of Nigel Levine and other British athletes who had funding cut having to work at McDonald's etc. I believe the same has happened in the USA.

A lot of contracts are performance related also so with no races how can one perform?

rojo wrote:

Here's an interesting article related to Kenyan finances. Some training camp organizer has agreed to give his athletes 10,000 Kenyan shillings a month during the Covid-19 crisis and they are thrilled about it. That's like $93 a month.

But the reason why they like that is that's close to the Kenyan average income. GDP per person in Kenya is right around $1300 per year now.

https://www.nation.co.ke/sports/athletics/Naivasha-camp-offers-stipend--virtual-race-prize-money-runners/1100-5537818-h6unqiz/index.html

It's interesting to compare prize money based off of GDP per capita...$50,000 from a marathon is 29 times the gdp per capita in Kenya. That's the equivalent of like $2m in the U.S.

Kenyans are not generally going to be earning a lot of money from sponsorships, not even medalists. They depend heavily on prize money and, in some cases, appearance fees, both of which have been scarce for an injured Manangoi for some time. He hadn't struck me as the farmer type, in contrast to Tim.