as a Sports influencer

This was actually meant to be the bottom half of the earlier article. But as I wrote and wrote, it seemed to me that this held the merit to be another article altogether with a slant towards opinions and thoughts.

So here we are.

What I'm sharing right now isn't a new thing. It's been there for a while, but only after Rio last year did it take on a completely new vibe altogether, and one which I'm extremely pleased with.

Because it is long overdue.

About a decade ago, I worked for a very short time in a sports events company. What a non-competitive, non sportsperson type of person was doing in a sports events company can be simply answered by the fact that I thought I was going to deal with community events, and community events alone. Pretty naive, huh? Anyway, back then, sports was purely about sports, which meant that sports gear was purely about sports gear. And they were mostly in colors of black, blue, grey with an occasional hint of green or purple.

You know the neon colored sports shoes and laces that we have these days in the sports stores? Didn't exist then. Or the brightly colored tank tops and shirts that are in the Women's Section today at major sports stores? Didn't exist either.

To be a sportsperson then meant that you were tough, fearsome, tomboyish, focused, determined, aggressive, non-compromising, disciplined, passionate, competitive... everything and anything associated with the masculine attributes. There was nothing for the female in the sportsperson. If you were going to do sports, you were going to have to be like the men. You were going to have to throw away the mindset of prettifying yourself and live and breathe and live and breathe only one thing. COMPETITION and WINNING.

Anything other that attitude was deemed to be distracting and worthless to the GOAL of winning and beating the competition.

In other words, if you were a non sports, non competitive person like me, if you were dorky, chubby, with not an ounce of adrenaline or active physical energy in your body, if you were unable to 'toughen your mind up', there was nothing in the active gear genre for you, and nothing that you could wear to look pretty at the same time.

You don't want to know what I wore at that time. Suffice it to say I felt like a complete fish out of water with my explosion of colors and range of colored polo t-shirts. I don't think I wore as many polo t-shirts in my life as I did that time. Nearly every day was a polo t-shirt; one day I wore pink, another I wore  (And I don't think I even look good in them!)

Things are different now.

Puma, Asics, Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Under Armor, New Balance and a host of other brands have stepped up to the game and produced a range of very colorful sports gear. Prettified ones. The shoes are neon. The tops are neon. There are running shorts, sexy ones, and not so sexy ones. There are t-shirts in colors of lime green, vermillion, purple, fuchsia, disco pink and cerulean blue. There are pants in a range from leggings to straight to yoga with, or without patterns on the sides. You've got vibrant accessories. And the shoes are no longer chunky and heavy with stripes that match with nothing else. They are so bright that they by themselves are termed street style.

See, it's no longer enough to just be able to perform well in the sport. With sport now engaging and integrating into the element of Lifestyle (hi, athleisure) and day-to-day jobs, it becomes essential that not only must one aim for perfection in a sport, one must look good when you're there. It is no longer sufficient to simply depend on the achievements and accolades whilst looking like we're scarred and wounded and exhausted all over.

For too long, we have taken this stance where we believe that as long as we have the certificates and the proof of our capabilities, it doesn't matter how we look when we're getting there, or when we're there.

But that's no longer the case anymore. That's not how it is with the sporting arena anymore. Sportspeople are powerful influencers. This is not a biggie. But have we, to date, seen a sportsperson influencer who looks like they need some help in defining their appearance? No. They look good. They look smart. They look tough. They look sharp.

If Messi or Ronaldo or Usain weren't so good-looking and model-esque and winners in their game, would they have the influence that they wield amongst football lovers and runners around the world? And Karlie Kloss has also jumped in. She's a face for Adidas now. It can only get better, and prettier. Victoria Secret has a Sport line- and it is quality enough for real gym work. (How else do the Angels get their lingerie-worthy bodies otherwise?) H&M and Uniqlo and Forever 21 have their Sport Lines as well. Then we have CK Performance, which is a whole new line dedicated to Sport under the Calvin Klein brand.

So it isn't only about the Gold anymore. It's about what you do with the Gold after you get it. It's about being human. It's about influencing the non sporty people to get their grit and their determination together and put it to the grind for the sake of health and their bodies.

And looking good is a great motivator altogether.

Just ask the millennials.

Tell them to do a sport because of *lists all the benefits* and they'll simply shrug and walk away. They've got other things to do in life, whatever they might be.
 

 And for them, it's not enough just to be successful and win. You're not much of a motivator nor an inspirer if you win in life but look like you've had a long, hard fight getting there. These days, it's critical for an influencer if you look the part and prove the part. An influencer who only proves the part but does not look it is viewed with skepticism.

 

Sure, the youth might not value the wounds and the scars that the Experienced brandish about like medals of valor as much as they should, but perhaps, just perhaps, they witnessed the journey of the Experienced, they witnessed the drudgery and the trudging route they took to achieve the success, and whilst they admire them, perhaps, there's a part of them deep down where they know they have just one life that will not be a bed of roses, so why not try planting the rose bushes and self-scatter as many rose petals as possible whilst getting there? 

Our athletes are young. And they're as much influencers to youth in, and out of our country. They're as much deserving to be admired as their counterparts from neighboring countries. Let's not go into sponsorship. Sponsorship is a different matter entirely and it doesn't mean that only for the purpose of Sponsorship should a person look good. That's Business, but not a statement of relevance to make to the athlete, and to the sport itself. An athlete is an athlete, and an athlete, whether he or she gets the dollars or not, deserves to look confident, sharp, aggressive, tough, beautiful, good-looking and personable all at the same time. Whether they've won the Gold, or whether they're getting there.

After all, there was a time when lots of girls had crushes on Fandi Ahmad and Lim Tong Hai and Nasri Nazir and the whole national football team. Because they were symbols of national football pride, AND they looked cute.

So there. *_*