By Jjagwe Robert
The one biggest problem that Sports has is that in order to have a winner, everybody else must lose.
I am told that about 29 countries are participating in the Ghana All Africa Games (AAG) and if this is the case then, if, ideally all Sports have 29 countries competing, then there will be 28 losers per Sport in order to have the Gold medalists.
If you remove Silver and Bronze Medalists (because these can also be considered to be triumphant) then each Sport will ideally have 26 losers at the end of the AAG. These are too many losers and their management (or consolation) becomes of key importance.
That’s why we need management of Losers in Sports and I wrote a full chapter on this in my book ” The Sports Development Masterpiece – Time to go Commercial”
One solution here is to have multiple levels of winners. This is why we are very happy that our players of Table Tennis (TT) that were also winners at the Ugandan Qualification Championship will get good allowance each from government for playing for Uganda in Ghana.
This way they also benefit from their sweat and duty to the country. Qualifying to play for Uganda in Ghana was in itself a good level of triumph by our TT players. They actually fought very hard from a total pool of 65 for men and 42 for Ladies. Moreso from very grueling Round Robin games.
From these pools they emerged in the top 3 positions and then qualified for the AAG in Ghana. This was their first level of triumph which will be rewarded by government of Uganda. This is very key for us in the development of Ugandan Sports because not everyone can walk away with a medal at the highest international competitions such as these AAG.
The Writer is the President of the Uganda Table Tennis Association(UTTA) and Secretary General of the Union of Uganda Sports Federations and Associations (UUSFA)
