Nijel Amos accept challenge for half a million-pula race

 

The 800m runner, Nigel Amos’ sterling performance over the years has inspired the not-so well- known Kgotso Mpenya to challenge the Botswana star to a race on the 25th of January 2020.

Mpenya tells BG Sport that the race will be dubbed, All Against One, which is his clothing brand under Lavendro.  “I proposed this race to Nijel Amos because he has inspired the brand’s founding. We grew up together but we have never been on the same race, and I believe that I can beat him at 800m,” said the confident Mpenya. “The reason I challenged him is because our brand deals with sportswear, particularly for athletics than any other genre,” he said. He adds that he is not only out there to run but also to prove a point about their company, as they will also be the host, amongst other companies. He says that if Amos beats him, he would get a cash prize of P500 000.00. “If he wins, he gets P500 000.00 within 48 hours but should I win, I want some message to be highlighted through him,” he said.

This race would be embraced by eight athletes, four of them from the public and the other two will be professional athletes, in addition to Amos and Mpenya. He however, says the number might also change to 14, based on certain effects that may transpire during planning. The actual set date for this race is January 25 2020, Mpenya says. Mpenya says that he has less than eight months to train and become mentally and physically fit for the race.

“I don’t need more than 14 months to train,” he said, adding that he is confident to beat Amos because he too participated in minor races during his school days just like Amos and hence he is not intimidated by him. “So far, I have been running from Oasis Motel to Tlokweng Border gate just for my endurance,” he said.  “We have however never run against each other and he has never seen me run 800m race but I am confident that I will win, based on the purpose I am running for,” he reiterated.

Amos has accepted the invitation and considers it a tough challenge. He emphasized that Mpenya’s confidence already gave him a chill in the spine but he is up for it. He teased that he has searched Mpenya on social platforms to find out if he has ever run but found nothing, which makes him wonder, if the ambitious fellow understands what it takes to cross the finish line. “He has never competed anywhere, but I take the challenge and I am not solely on about pocketing the cash prize but rather to promote a local brand and empower the youth,” he said.

The organiser of the event, Gilbert Seagile of Gilbert Promotions says that their main goal is to have this initiative on the history books, since it is the first of its kind. “Mpenya has been given six months of training where by we would be assisting him by organizing his training with experts like BDF. He would also go for 30 days training in CKGR,” said Seagile.  He also added that they aim at exposing the event. “We want to build this event to have value, whereby we can sell rights of the content to channels like Super Sport, Trace Channel, Netflix, MTV and Btv,” he said .