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Julius Yego blasts EABL for using his win to market Tusker

August 27th, 2015 1 min read

The new javelin world champion Julius Yego has called out Kenya Breweries Limited for cheekily what appears to be his name in an online flyer.

Yego’s massive throw of 92.72m on Wednesday earned Kenya its first gold medal in field events at the ongoing IAAF World Championships.

A Tusker flyer that has been widely circulated on the internet shows a silhouette of a male javelin thrower with the caption “YEGOLD!”.

Newly crowned javelin world champion Julius Yego of Kenya makes a throw at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, China.
Newly crowned javelin world champion Julius Yego of Kenya makes a throw at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing, China.

Nowhere has the brewery used the name Julius Yego but using literary skill, portmanteau (blending sounds and combining the meanings of two words to form one), the company came up with YEGOLD, which can be construed to be a clever merger of Yego and the gold medal he won.

The champion, who is said to be a teetotaler, took to his Facebook account to call out the beer maker.

 

“This is wrong!am not doing branding on this (sic),” he wrote, attaching the flyer.

Yego, who says he learnt the art of javelin throwing from watching videos on YouTube, has an endorsement deal with mobile phone company Orange.

Combo

 

EABL is yet to comment on the matter. But they are not alone. Coca Cola has also used a number of the names of the world-beating Kenya athletes on similar flyers.

Coca Cola has used the names of gold medalists of yego, David Rudisha (men’s 800M), Hyvin Jepkemoi (women’s 3000m steeplechase), Nicholas Bett (men’s 400m hurdles), Vivian Cheruiyot (women’s 10,000m) and Ezekiel Kemboi (men’s 3,000m steeplechase).