Tribune IAAF Moscow championship: Another dismal outing · Monday, 09 September 2013 00:00 For Nigeria, the highlight of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships which held between 10-18 August at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, Russia, was the bracing performance of the captain of the Nigerian contingent, Blessing Okagbare. Having won a silver medal in the long jump event with a leap of 6.99 meters, the Sapele, Delta State-born Okagbare followed up with a bronze in the women’s 200m event. Incidentally, both medals were the country’s first since 1999 when, in that year’s Championship which took place in Seville, Spain, Glory Alozie and Francis Obikwelu won silver and bronze medal in the women’s 100m hurdles and men’s 200m respectively. Okagbare’s medals apart, the Moscow meet was a disaster for the country. Where Okagbare sparkled, others wilted. For instance, hurdler Muizat Ajoke Odumosu failed to live up to heightened expectations, crashing out of her event (the 400m hurdles) after two false starts. UK-based triple jumper, Tosin Oke, did not even appear for his own event, spawning theories that he may have been injured prior to the Championship. All in all, the 20-man contingent, sans Okagbare, was ill-starred, and departed Moscow with a whimper. Blessing Okagbare has been extolled for her stellar performance, one that becomes even more exemplary given the lugubrious output of the rest of Team Nigeria. The current holder of the African record in the women’s 100m deserves every accolade, and we wish to join the Nigerian athletics community and the country at large in extending warm congratulations to her. Yet, while felicitations are in order, it is important not to lose sight of the lessons from Ms. Okagbare’s success. The first point to be made is that Blessing Okagbare succeeded not because of any sustained institutional support from the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), but arguably despite the many obstacles put in her way (and the way of the rest of the Nigerian contingent) by the same Federation. For instance, pleading financial incapacity, the AFN failed to deliver on its pledge to camp the team for necessary pre-Championships coaching and bonding. In other climes, such occasions are seized upon as prime opportunities to hone skills to near-perfection and forge team unity. In the absence of such, Team Nigeria was a pale shadow of its pre-tournament promise. Second, although Okagbare is Nigerian through and through, we wonder whether she could have attained her current performance levels without the benefit of the exposure to excellent training facilities that she has enjoyed outside the country, specifically in the United States of America. Unbeknownst to many Nigerians, Ms. Okagbare is a veteran of the collegiate circuit in the United States, where she successfully wore the colors of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Incidentally, this has been the pattern with most successful Nigerian athletes. Sport aficionados are bound to notice that the pattern is by no means exclusive to athletics. While these sportsmen and women are proud to compete for Nigeria, their motherland, they tend to do so with significant infusion of infrastructural capital from the developed world. Worryingly, many of such athletes actually wind up flying the flags of these surrogate countries. For instance, Glory Alozie and Francis Obikwelu, the two athletes who did Nigeria proud in the 1999 Championships, are now citizens of Spain and Portugal respectively. This particular fact should occupy the minds of the officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) as they begin preparations for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For far too long, Nigeria has been associated in the global imagination with logistical amateurism and staggering corruption. Using the Moscow outing as a backdrop, the Federation can begin the first tentative steps towards becoming a born-again institution. In this, it can borrow a leaf from Jamaica, the tiny Caribbean island (population 2.9million) that, through careful planning, has managed to turn its athletics programme into the envy of the world. Global stars like Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown and Shell- Ann Fraser-Pryce are products of this system, especially its emphasis on the provision of excellent training facilities. Right now, a huge amount of resources is invested in athletics with little or nothing to show for it. The task before the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) is to ensure that such investment translates into worthwhile performances across the athletic spectrum. It is time Nigeria reclaimed its mantle as Africa’s preeminent sporting nation.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 07:49:54 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015