Former star runner shapes future athletes

AMINUIS-BORN former long-distance runner Bethold Karumendu is no lightweight when it comes to marketing and managing athletics in Namibia.

Karumendu has represented Namibia in many junior and senior races beyond our borders.

In fact, the former athlete has devoted his entire life to athletics, first as a runner for 11 years, and then as an administrator from 2000 to date.

Karumendu started running seriously in 1989 while a pupil at Mokganedi Tlabanello Secondary School at Drimiopsis in the Omaheke region, and it was also where he became a force to be reckoned with in the 800m, 1 500m and 3 000m races for boys under 15.

“I stopped playing football in 1989 to focus entirely on my athletics career. I was actually advised by my athletics coaches that I could risk getting seriously injured if I continued playing football and doing athletics at the same time.

“I became a dominant factor at my school and region, winning the 3 000m race and finishing as runner-up in the 800m and 1 500m. However, things only started to hit up when I moved to the under-17 age group, where I performed above expectations,” he says.

Karumendu says he knew he was on the right track after he defeated the unbeaten Moses Maasdorp, the darling of junior long-distance athletics at the time, in the 3 000m race during the National Schools Athletics Championships at Independence Stadium in 1992.

The former runner completed matric at Ella du Plessis Secondary School and subsequently started competing in the weekly 5 000m and 10 000m Pepsi Cross-Country series that saw him improving vastly as a long-distance runner, with invitations from South Africa to participate in high-profile events in 1993.

He went to run his first half-marathon (21,1km) at Phalaborwa, in Limpopo, South Africa, on invitation by the Namibia Athletics Union, which were requested to send three athletes to the event.

Karumendu finished 16th overall and second in the junior category to return home with a silver medal – his first medal outside Namibian borders.

Karumendu and former sprint sensation Tobias Akwenye were the first two junior black athletes to represent the country at the first African under-20 Junior Athletics Championships in Algiers, Algeria, in 1994.

Karumendu has been a qualified international starter since he completed his starter course in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2016.

This made him the second Namibian after the late Ernst Aston to qualify as a starter.

Karumendu is currently employed as the sports officer for Erongo inland, which makes him the controlling official for the Daures, Karibib and Omaruru constituencies.

PANDEMIC CHALLENGES

“The mandate of my office is to support, control, coordinate, facilitate and offer guidance to sports bodies and organisations staging sport events in our duty station area. I am based at Omaruru from where I am overlooking my constituency.

“Right now we can’t run our business smoothly, because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. But things are likely to return to normal soon,” he says.

Karumendu, who boasts a best time of one hour and five minutes in the half-marathon, is also the current technical commissioner of the Omaruru Athletics Club, which just uncovered two young and talented athletes in David Dam and Bombo Kahiimunu.

Apart from athletics, Karumendu is also overlooking other sport codes, such as boxing, football and netball, while he is the race director of the annual Navachab Half-Marathon, the Omaruru Street Mile, and the 10km Spar Cycling Race between Oshakati Spar and Ongwediva Spar.

He says despite the government’s efforts to fund some of the events in his region, he is operating on a very limited budget due to a lack of funds.

He is also the head of the Olympic Africa Centre, which is an initiative of the International Olympic Committee through the Namibia National Olympic Committee to build a state-of-the-art sport complex, which is currently under construction at Omaruru.

Karumendu, who has obtained an advanced diploma in sport management and administration at the University of Belgium, also holds an events and competition management diploma.

He has also been technical official for the biannual SADC Africa Union Sports Council Region 5 Youth Games that were first hosted by Mozambique in 2004, of which last year’s event will now only be hosted by Lesotho in December this year, because of the pandemic.

The retired runner has been married to Samueline Karumendu, the mother of his two sons, for the past 19 years.

Karumendu admits that he misses his days as an athlete and laments young people’s lack of interest in athletics.

“I really miss athletics, and I am very shocked about the state of our sport. We used to have hundreds of top athletes competing for top honours. We had athletes like Frank Kayele, Luketz Swartbooi, Thomas Kayele and Aaron Shipanga, who were at the top.

“We were all striving to reach the level of those top stars. Although some of us specialised in the shorter distances, we all wanted to reach their superstar status. They were the elite crop who always qualified for the World Championships and the Olympic Games,” he says.

Karumendu advises aspiring athletes to live up to the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect.

“To become a champion is never easy, but hard work and commitment brings you closer to your goals. Remember that nothing on this earth is impossible.”