Sha­had Ali

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Pri­or to the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion we had very lit­tle knowl­edge of Keshorn and Njisane. At the end of the 2012 Lon­don Olympic Games, we now know them as two ath­letes who rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go. It is a fact that these two ath­letes have been in the lime­light a lot more than the oth­ers. As in­quis­i­tive as I usu­al­ly am, I won­dered why they were placed al­most every­where in our dai­ly news­pa­pers. As I browsed through my so­cial me­dia at the end of the Olympic pe­ri­od the 'memes' were end­less. One read 'Keshorn thief all Njisane women!' It re­al­ly gave a clear in­di­ca­tion as to why these two ath­letes be­came so pop­u­lar. I be­gan ques­tion­ing all my fe­male friends for feed­back on the sit­u­a­tion. Many of them stat­ed that the gold medal which Keshorn re­ceived added a whole new sexy to his im­age, while oth­ers stat­ed that Njisane needs a se­ri­ous per­son­al­i­ty ad­just­ment. Many were ac­tu­al­ly up­set that Njisane was pos­ing quite close­ly to Keshorn dur­ing the wel­come back cer­e­mo­ny at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Some posts on so­cial me­dia al­so stat­ed that Njisane should stop sip­ping wa­ter so se­duc­tive­ly on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion. The so­cial bat­tle had be­gun!

It was clear that Keshorn was shocked by the num­ber of peo­ple at the air­port that day. He, of course, would not have had a clue as to what it was like when Hase­ly Craw­ford won a gold medal back in the 1970s. He was hum­bled by the whole ex­pe­ri­ence. Ad­mit­ted­ly, Keshorn's sto­ry made it quite colour­ful for the news­pa­pers, hav­ing come from the rur­al back­ground of the East and now placed in­to the ac­tive lifestyles of the West. Njisane is of course an ex­cel­lent ath­lete; many of his fe­male fans are a bit ig­no­rant to that fact, since most en­joy look­ing at him. He placed fourth in the fi­nal race and the na­tion is look­ing for­ward to see­ing him per­form at the next Olympic Games. I was tired of hear­ing many say that Njisane was eat­ing sour grapes, but I refuse to be­lieve that he was. I think he was a bit dis­ap­point­ed of course, be­cause he fought well to reach the fi­nals of his races. Nev­er­the­less, his name was men­tioned nu­mer­ous times in our lo­cal me­dia.

Do you know that these guys are on twit­ter? Yes, you can fol­low them by search­ing for their names on­line. It's quite in­ter­est­ing to see what they have been post­ing. Even though Keshorn has post­ed no more than 15 tweets, he has been post­ing a lot of mean­ing­ful words: "With­out re­spect, love is lost. With­out car­ing, love is bor­ing. With­out hon­esty, love is un­hap­py. With­out trust, love is un­sta­ble". Njisane has two ac­counts un­der his name. I do not know which one he ac­tu­al­ly runs but both are ded­i­cat­ed to the 'in­sane world of Njisane' and are up­dat­ed reg­u­lar­ly. (All twit­ter ac­counts men­tioned are not ver­i­fied). If you were to pick (just based on the per­son­al­i­ties of these two sport­ing ath­letes), who would you choose and why? Post your re­spons­es to the 'giemagazine' page on face­book and see your re­spons­es pub­lished in the mag­a­zine!