After retirement, Fredericks wants to devote time to developing young athletes in Namibia

Zamibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks wants a golden swansong at next month’s Olympics before he quits the circuit to spend more time helping poor youngsters back home. The Athens Games will draw the curtain on an illustrious career spanning two decades in which Fredericks clinched double 100 and 200 metres Olympic silver medals in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996 — but never the ultimate prize.

The former world 200 metres champion turns 37 in October and is well aware the clock is ticking. A couple of years ago he ditched the youthful ‘Frankie’ by which he was known for most of his career in favour of the more mature ‘Frank’.

He has almost retired at least twice but pressed on, lured by the elusive Olympic gold. “What we want in life is not what we get. This is going to be my last chance to try and get it,” he said during a break in training in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek.

When he hangs up his running shoes, Fredericks plans to devote more time and energy to his private plastic manufacturing business — and to developing young athletes in Namibia, whose 1.9 million people face poverty and chronic hunger despite rich reserves of diamonds and other minerals.

“It is my way of giving back, because I have really been fortunate. I am living in a good house, I have a family, and all of this I got because somebody gave an opportunity,” he said.

Describing himself as a product of “assistance by other people,” he created the Frank Fredericks Foundation “to do what the sponsors did to me”.

“If it wasn’t for my sponsors, my mum could not afford to send me to university,” he said.

Like Fredericks himself, most come from the poor black township of Katutura on the outskirts of Windhoek. Each receives 3000 Namibian dollars ($434.6), half of it to pay for schooling and the other half to buy sports equipment. When they graduate from high school Fredericks coaches them personally.

He has qualified for both the 100 and 200 Olympic races but says he may decide to concentrate on one event in Athens. “Probably the better chance to win a gold medal will be in the 200 metres because in the 100 metres most likely any mistake that you make you are dead,” said Fredericks.

He predicted that home advantage would make Costas Kenteris — already the holder of a unique 200 metre Olympic, world and European treble — even more dangerous in Athens. “This is definitely going to be my final year,” he added. “If I don’t get it then it just means Frank Fredericks was not supposed to have Olympic gold.”