ATHLETICS: THE STORIES AND THE FADING GLORY

 By Enefiok Udo-Obong 

When the dust settles on Tokyo 2020, Nigerians will have to do a serious self-appraisal on the level of development they have carried in sports. On the evidence of results alone, the 2020 Olympics is Nigeria’s best outing in 20 years. But is that any consolation for a sports-crazy nation with 200 million fans? Probably not. A solitary silver and bronze medals will no doubt generate the debate on what we must do now to improve our performance in the Games and we probably will go back to our proverbial ‘drawing board’ to continue our everlasting plans we never implement.

While wrestling joined the elite club of sports that have provided a medal for Nigeria at the Olympiad, making the membership of that small cult to be six, the king of Olympic sports in Nigeria, athletics saved its face with a bronze medal but that should not get us blinded to the fact that most of what athletics brought us from Japan were embarrassing stories in quick succession.

Even before the Games started, we were given doses of unpalatable stories of the team failing in its bid to qualify for one relay after another. There was the rejection of the women’s 4 x400m team by World Athletics’ AIU (Athletics Integrity Unit) due to technical errors in the qualifying. There was also the failed attempt to make the 4 x 100m team qualify for the Games despite making over three attempts in a spate of five days. All these efforts were due to the inability of the Nigerian Team to attend the World Relays competition a few weeks earlier due to administrative bickering.

As a matter of fact, the major players in our dismal outing was from the administrators of athletics. Hardly had the team arrived in Tokyo when they were told that almost half of the athletics team would be barred from competing due to ‘administrative failures’ of not completing required Out-of -Competition tests. Together with news of the team’s sponsorship brouhaha with German Kit company PUMA, these issues dominated the news all through the week the athletics competition was going on. The stories were everywhere. Even the big bombshell that our poster girl for three Olympiads, Blessing Okagbare had failed a dope test did not even make much of the headlines for more than 24 hours. The press was not lacking in stories of controversy from athletics. “10 Nigerian athletes barred from Olympics”, “Nigerian Officials seize Samsung Phones given to athletes”,”Okagbare fails Dope test”, “Nigerian athletes lead protest in Games Village”, “Nigerian athlete washes his ONLY kit for finals”, “PUMA terminates $2.7 million Nigerian kitting deal”. Each day that passed brought a new headline for the press to highlight.

Back home, the press continued to fuel these stories and the previous minister, one a lot of people would describe as a disaster when in charge of Nigeria’s sports and was the root cause of all these problems, went on air as often as he was invited to uncharacteristically put the blames directly on his successor in office. This is very unusual for a minister serving the same government and from the same political party. However, Nigerians now know that with Solomon Dalung, nothing is usual.

It was sad that the heroic efforts of Ese Brume did not get a lot of headlines. It probably would later as we take stock of our participation in Tokyo. Her effort now makes the female long Jump the most successful event for Nigeria following the heroics of Chioma Ajunwa a quarter of a century ago and Blessing Okagbare’s silver in 2008. The event now has the complete set of medals at the Olympics, one gold, one silver and a bronze medal. The male football team has also completed the circle of a gold, a silver and bronze medals. The men’s 4 x 400m with a Gold medal and 2 bronze medals is the next best events in our Olympic history.

The women’s long jump is also one of only four individual events in which Nigeria still holds an African record. The others are 100m hurdles women (Gloria Alozie), Shot Put women, (Vivian Chukwuemeka) and the hammer throw women (Annette Echikunwoke). Even in the team events Nigeria once boasted of holding all four African records. But the records in the men 4x 100m has been lost to Ghana and now the 4 x400m record has been lost to Botswana. This just shows us that it is not the world leaving us in sports performance, African countries too are getting the better of us. And that is a bitter pill to swallow. Within the last five years, Nigeria has lost African records in 100m men and women, 200m women, 400m men and women, 4×100 men and 4 x400m men. And we have gained only one record (The hammer women).

The administrators have their work cut out. They have to put Nigeria back on the rise. The efforts of the athletes are being thwarted by inadequate and unqualified administrators as was very obvious in Tokyo. But in wreckage of all the bloopers, the athletes still are heroes as Ese brume has shown. And she was not alone. Tobi Amusan and Chukwuebuka Enekwechi gave us some things to cheer also.