DARREL BRISTOW-BOVEY: The checkered career of SA's draughts world champ
'I had never heard of Lubabalo Kondlo before this week, when the news broke that he had finally become world champion for the first time'
EXTRACT
Ron King calls himself King Ron and trains like a boxer, skipping and running and doing press-ups and power squats and honing his reflexes with table tennis and handball. In his native Barbados he was national sports personality of the year three times and appears on TV adverts and billboards. He’s sponsored by Subaru and Mitsubishi and was given 12,000 square feet of land by his government in recognition of his sporting dominance.
There’s a statue of him outside his old high school. Reggae songs have been written about him. Barbados is not a rich nation, and draughts doesn’t have the profile of cricket, but his nation knows how to reward a hero.
Lubabalo Kondlo doesn’t have sponsorship deals or statues and certainly no one has given him any land. He isn’t even competing in SA colours
On the night before the final day’s play in the 2007 finals, the underdog challenger, a young man named Lubabalo Kondlo who has travelled all the way from New Brighton, Port Elizabeth to the badlands of Iowa to take on the greatest champion the sport has ever seen, pulls his peaked cap low over his eyes and sits back in his chair. He has played the champ to a draw over 20 rounds, and there are only four to go tomorrow. If the final four rounds are also drawn, the champ keeps his title. If he wants the win he must take a chance; to create an opening he must open himself to defeat. “I have to win tomorrow,” he says. “I have to win. If I become champion tomorrow, it will change everything.” The man he’s challenging is Ron “Suki” King, champion for the past 19 years, the trash-talking Muhammad Ali of his sport. Ron glares at his opponent across the arena and says: “You shouldn’t talk, son, because when you open your mouth I take a peep inside and see you have no brain.” Ron King calls h...
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