When Caster met Nike: The hidden story behind athletics' most powerful partnership
South Africa's Caster Semenya competes in the women's 800m during the IAAF Diamond League competition in Doha on May 3, 2019.
What you need to know:
- Caster Semenya joined University of Pretoria in 2009, where she received crucial support including training facilities and professional care that helped advance her athletic career.
- At just 18, she showed remarkable integrity by rejecting multiple suspicious offers, including performance-enhancing drugs and briefcases full of dollars from dubious agents.
- Her early professionalism and wise choices led her to become only the second South African after Oscar Pistorius to sign with Nike, a contract she still maintains today.
In The Race to Be Myself, Mokgadi Caster Semenya states that she joined the University of Pretoria in February 2009, shortly after her 18th birthday. She had met her trainer, Michael Seme, at the university’s famous High Performance Centre in 2008, when she was training to represent South Africa at the World Junior Athletics Championships in Warsaw, Poland.
The cover of Caster Semenya's book, The Race To Be Myself.
By 2009, she had already accumulated accolades that included an 800 metre silver medal at the 2007 Confederation of School Sport Associations of Southern Africa Championships. She also represented South Africa at the World Junior Championships in Poland in July 2008. She eventually won gold at the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games in New Delhi, India, in October the same year after her arch-opponent and record-breaking Kenyan sensation Pamela Jelimo withdrew to participate at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Seme was a prolific athletics coach from Soweto in Johannesburg and was renowned for his sophisticated speed training and racing tactics that propelled athletes to their maximum acceleration. When Caster completed her high school in Ga-Masehlong village in Polokwane city, Limpopo province, Seme convinced Pretoria University to offer the teenager a scholarship.
Before she started training at the High Performance Centre, Caster's injuries had never been definitively diagnosed as she couldn’t afford professional care. At the university, athletes were offered free standard meals. They had a modern treatment facility with infinite access to a resident physiotherapist. The atmosphere made Caster focus on her athletic career.
One evening, a middle-aged stranger approached her outside the university as she walked back to her quarters. He was formally dressed and was standing next to a top-of-the-range vehicle. He indicated to Caster that he had vitamins that could improve her 800 metre Personal Best (PB) time, which, by then, was already impressive 2:04 minutes. She immediately knew the vitamins he was referring to contained performance-enhancing components that would lead to a flunked blood and urine test, discredit her reputation and ultimately destroy her career. She retorted by sarcastically informing the stranger that she was receiving free meals that had vitamins at the university cafeteria.
Caster subsequently competed in a Yellow Pages-sponsored event in Stellenbosch, 31 miles east of Cape Town, and the following weekend she won an 800 metre event in Germiston, south-east of Jo'burg, improving her PB to two minutes flat.
Endorsement deals
With just one officially certified two-minute run in the books, her financial fortune began to change. Seme arranged a meeting with a sporting agent known as David Oliver, to create vast opportunities and improve Caster's income. She knew all the top athletes had lucrative sponsorship and endorsement deals and brimmed with anticipation as David presented her with an agency contract and gifted her a cellphone.
Persuaded by Seme, Caster signed the contract, legally handing David the power to represent her. After her two-minute record run in Germiston, Caster had qualified for her first senior competition, the South African Athletics Championships. It was held in March 2009, in Coetzenburg Stadium, Stellenbosch, and she won the race in 2:02 minutes, earning yet another qualification to the African Junior Athletics Championship that would be held in July on the picturesque island of Mauritius.
David immediately phoned Seme who was with Caster and used obscene terms towards the race she had just won. He said he couldn’t acquire any significant deals for her if she didn't run faster. Seething at his disrespect, Caster instantly terminated her contract with David. When Caster returned to Pretoria, decorated South African middle-distance athlete Mbulaeni Mulaudzi referred his Finnish agent and sports manager Jukka Harkonen to her.
Jukka had built a rapport with numerous Olympians and world athletics champions and when Caster met with him, his charm convinced her that he would exert a moral and dignified representation.
When Jukka briefly travelled to Finland, Seme introduced Caster to another agent who only went by the name Mr Newton. Newton walked into the room holding a briefcase, placed it on the table and opened it. It had hundreds of thousands of US dollars.
Caster quickly noted Newton's malice. She knew if she accepted the money and signed what appeared to be a mischievous contract, she would cede her name, image and most of the rights to her future endorsement, appearance and victory earnings to Newton. She refused to sign, despite Seme's insistence.
Professionalism
Although Caster was just 18, she possessed a vibrant understanding of professionalism. When Jukka returned from Finland, he presented her with an Adidas contract in his left hand and a Nike contract in his right hand. Caster became only the second South African after Paralympian Oscar Pistorius to sign with Nike and because of the institution's image, she still has a contract with the brand.
The writer is a novelist, Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).
