To be honest, I have been out of touch with the Paralympics championship and athletics in general for some time - transfer widow matters took center stage. I express regret!

Yet recently great news came down, when national champion Cliff Hermas Muvunyi won the first gold medal for the country at the sixth IPC Athletics World Championships at the stade Du Rhone in Lyon, France. Muvunyi's victory in the T46 800m is an unprecedented feat for paralympic sports in Rwanda, all the more so since he beat his personal record.

Without any doubt, the personal sports hero of the month is Muvunyi, having raised Rwanda's flag at the highest international level. While Muvunyi's time of 1:54:04 isn't the World Record (which was set at 1:51.82 by Gunther Matzinger), it is still a performance we should all admire, as he has shown all athletes that Rwandans, too, can be winners.

The question the 24-year-old's performance raises, however, is: "Where did this excellent form come from?" When it comes to our IPC athletes, they might peak occasionally, but they never seem to be able to keep going at the same level.

He came close in the London Olympics, where the champ vested a lot of energy in the men's T46 800m category and lost the bronze after he was disqualified because he pushed Kenya's Abraham Tarbei en route to the finish line.

On the continental level, too, Muvunyi did rather well, especially during the 2011 All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique where he scooped a gold medal in the 400m T46 (50.28) and silver in 800m T46 (1:56.00).

That already was an encouraging development, because often when our athletes achieve something, they aren't able to repeat it. In Maputo, however, Muvunyi did. And now he has crowned it with a world championship gold medal.

So far, however, this remains a rare case of success, in paralympics or otherwise. Muvunyi's teammate, Theoneste Nsengimana, for example, has been less impressive, having failed to qualify in the men's T46 1,500m in London last summer, and in Lyon too.

Yet he, and others too, have the potential to do better. So the federations should step up its efforts to train and develop athletes like Muvunyi, and their performance will undoubtedly improve; the great potential will not disappear.