Team Nigeria Equal Best Ever Performance

Team Nigeria Equal Best Ever Performance

: Aug 19, 2013

--Nigeria place 24th in medals standings as Championship ends

With the curtains drawn on the 14th IAAF World Championships yesterday at the Luizhniki stadium here in Moscow, Team Nigeria ended her participation with a silver and a bronze medal to equal Nigeria's best ever performance at the event.

The team finished joint 24th best on the medals table and 19th on the placing table, amassing a total of 19 points following one second, one third and two sixth place finishes.  Fourteen years ago, Nigeria recorded her best performance with two medals; a silver won by Gloria Alozie in the 100m hurdles with 12.44 seconds to equal her African record time and a bronze won by Francis Obikwelu in the men's 200m event. He ran 19.84 seconds in the semifinals to set a world leading mark for the year.

A third medal, a 4x100m bronze was later withdrawn due to the doping violation rules by sprinter Innocent Asonze.

Fourteen years on, sprinter Blessing Okagbare won two medals, a silver in the long jump with her second best ever jump (6.99m) and a bronze in the 200m with her second fastest time ever to equal the feat performed by two athletes in Seville, Spain in 1999.

But the performance of the women's 4x100m relay team on the final day of the championships epitomised the country's stunted growth in the sport.

The team was disqualified for violating IAAF rule 170.7 which states that the baton shall be passed within the takeover zone. The passing of the baton commences when it is first touched by the receiving athlete and is  completed the moment it is in the hand of only the receiving athlete. In relation to the takeover zone, it is only the position of the baton which is decisive. Passing of the baton outside the takeover zone shall result in disqualification.

The team dropped the baton at the second change over between Patience Okon and Stephanie Kalu and was promptly disqualified for violating the rule.

With a country used to celebrating second best,it wasn't out of place for Nigerians to celebrate Okagbare's  achievement. As an individual, Okagbare did very well for herself but as a nation, we should look at ourselves in the mirror and say we have not done well.

With less than three million people, Jamaica won six gold medals to finish third on the medals table behind Russia who won the championships with seven gold medals and USA who came second with six gold medals and superior silver medals to Jamaica while Nigeria, a country of over 160 million people has consistently failed to get her national anthem sung in the 30 years the IAAF World Championships have been held.

The joke around Moscow, especially at the Best Western Vega hotel for the media  prior to the closing ceremony was that the IAAF would have found it difficult to get to play Nigerian anthem if Okagbare, the country's heroine had struck gold.

Even Nigeria ambassador to Russia, Hasam Ekanem Hasam (SAN) expressed sadness at the inability of Nigeria to fulfil her huge potentials in sports.

'The annoying part of the whole thing is that we know the problems and the solution but nobody seems to be doing anything about it,'' the ambassador told the Nigerian journalists who paid him a courtesy call on Friday night.

“When the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta, arrived to watch his country at the championships, one of the things I told him at the airport was to congratulate him on the feat of the Kenyan athletes who have been doing Africa proud here...(won five gold medals to place fourth) I am not sure the same can be said of Nigeria and yet we have the potentials to be the best not only in Africa but all over the world. What I have discovered is that God has richly endowed us to the extent that we easily excel in whatever profession we found ourselves at international level. I think it is time to fulfil those potentials,'' he said.

The ambassador actually hit the nail on the head. Nigeria's heroine in Moscow, Okagbare would have also been an 'also-ran' if she had not gone to study at the University of Texas in El Paso, USA.

The likes of Mary Onyali, Falilat Ogunkoya, Davidson Ezinwa, Olapade Adeniken, Daniel Effiong, Chidi Imoh and Fatimah Yusuf were made better athletes by American universities.

Okagbare was recruited by coach Tony Osheku for coach Bob Kittens, then the head coach at UTEP and between 2008 and 2010,the Nigerian was molded into  one of the world's finest elite athletes.

Kittens actually confirmed this: She's one of a kind. They threw away the mold when they made her.

From there, NIKE, the sportwear manufacturers took over her management, provided her with arguably the best sprint coach in the world in the person of John Smith and arranged for everything that would make her a truly great athlete.

 Here in Moscow, she was with her management team all through the championships, receiving the necessary coaching tutorials and medical attention.

She couldn't have received that with Nigeria..not with a team of 20 having only one physiotherapist and no chiropractor. ------------------------ complete sports