Nairobi Marathon: Apply a Little Socialism?

The Nairobi Marathon is just 4 days away. That means hundreds of pretty darn good local runners are packing their bags and starting to book their bus tickets into the capital city of Nairobi.

If the last few days are anything to go by, the weather on race day might be wet and cool although I haven’t looked at any meteorological reports – just my usually incorrect weather guessing.

But apart from the conditions on race day, the runners this year will be eyeing a really, really big cash prize for the winner of both the men’s and women’s marathon. $20,000 goes to the winner while 2nd gets $9,000 and 3rd pockets $5.000. If you compare this to the average income of a Kenyan (about $400) then it's quite a windfall.

So that got me thinking that it might be more appropriate to spread the generous purse across more runners than just the top 10 (10th gets $130). If you assume that the winner will be Kenyan, than even a top prize of $10,000 would attract the same group of local runners that are being attracted to the race now.

So if I were in charge (which I most definitely am not-even in my own house!) I would award the cash as follows:

1st- $10000
2nd- $7500
3rd- $5000
4th- $3000
5th- $2000
6th- $1500
7th- $1200
8th- $1000
9th- $900
10-19th - $500
20-30th - $200


I feel that a wider disbursement would give a much needed boost to some of these runners that are still developing and are probably finishing outside of the medals. If you read my profile on Margaret Njuguna (Oct 18 blog), then you’ll see that she earned about $1,000 over 7 months of running in SE Asia. So if she’s given an opportunity to earn something close to that right here at home, I think a lot of good will have been done for the sport in Kenya.

And after talking with a few people about this, I can say with confidence that at least 1 person agrees with me!