The Sun News On-line

Team Nigeria’s inability to rise up to the occasion at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has continued to generate fuse among sports-loving Nigerians. While some are still nursing the ‘injury’, wondering why the Dr Amos Adamu-led team could not save the nation from shame, others have submitted matter-of-factly that Nigeria’s woeful outing was indeed perfected at home before the competition began in Beijing.

However, Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medallist, Enefiok Udo-Obong, has dismissed the hue and cry about the country’s scandalous outing, insisting that such feat would definitely repeat itself given the same scenario in future.
Udo-Obong, who won gold in 4x400 relay event of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, wondered why since after the Seoul ’88 Olympics, Nigerian sports had remained in the doldrums.

He submitted that lack of quality administrators and the inability to develop school sports in the country immensely contributed to Nigeria’s dismal performance at Beijing Olympics.
"The failure is clear. Or what else do you want me to say? We are not yet ready to participate in Olympic Games. If we had prepared very well, by now we would have happier for it," Udo-Obong began.

"Damola Osayemi started very well at the junior level during Dan Ngerem as the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) president. And she was brought up by her coach, and the results we have had of Damola and how far she has gone had been so due to the fact that she went to the USA training and participating in competitions there.

"She was not preparing for the Olympics or training for Nigeria, so by April/May, Damola had reached her peak, because that was when the USA season ended. And after that competition, she went on her own, she never prepared for the Olympics.

"Nigerian federation will always complain of funds, but if we have foresight, they should be autonomous and go for private funding. If we have foresight, we should know that after failing in a given Olympics, the next move should be to embark on preparations of the next one immediately.
"Great Britain went to the 2008 Olympics with a target of winning 10 gold medals. They were not ambitious though, and they got more. What was our target for the Olympics? We should set our target now for the next Olympics.

Let’s not be too ambitious by saying that we will win 10 or 20 gold medals in the next Games, we should target at least five gold medals, that would be the best we would ever have for now. And where are these medals going to come from? From relay? Fine!
"If we can get one medal from the four relays, fine. We have a great jumper in Blessing, who missed qualification to the Olympics. We can now groom her, because she is the kind of athletes who can win laurels in future tournaments. All that we need now is a programme on athletics development, not just by going to corporate organisations to ask for the sponsorship of one Maltina tournament or the other where old athletes would be invited to come and run for an Under-19 championship, for example, and we give out prizes.

"The next, we will say that we have Governor Ibori Under-20, and the same set of people will converge to vie in the tourney. This is not how to develop athletics programmes. We should rather go to schools and get students who are athletic-minded, liaise with schools and the Schools Sports Federation to make a head way.

"It does not matter how raw the products might be, they may not be the best, but if they are properly trained and exposed, in four years time, they would have become world champions. When I started running, my coach earmarked four years time lag for me to start making waves, and within that period, I came to the limelight. My coach told me that it takes a period of four years to prepare an athlete. All you need to do within that four years is to remain dedicated, focused and determined.

"The AFN must be dedicated and determined too for us to move the sport forward in the country. There are officials at the world level and at the Olympics Organising Committee, but unfortunately, we do not have people from our federations at those levels. How many Nigerian officials are in the world boxing federation for instance? When you watch carefully, in basketball, how many Nigerian officials do you see at the world level? When you look at the committees of those associations, how many Nigerians are in FIFA, FIBA and others? But such things do count.

"When you have your people in those committees it helps when the politics of the game is being played at the top-most level. If your boxer for instance has a 50-50 chance, the possibility of him winning is high if you have your person in the decision making committee.
"Apart from all these, we need to bring our sports down to the school level. If the federations will begin to work in tandem with schools to develop sports in the country, we won’t be talking of under development in this area. But one thing I must tell you is that our best talents do not go into sports because they feel that sports is for dropouts. If we can get our best talents to continue in sports and know that they can merge sports with their professional career, we will do well. We have athletes who are doctors, lawyers, nurses all over the world. If we can do that in Nigeria by combining education and sports, we will attain greatness.

"When I was in school, I was not the best athlete. There were people who were better than me. I started running from primary to secondary school. In the university also, some people were better than me, but most of those students never took sports as a career. For me, it was out of fun and interest that I became an athlete.
"I tell you, if we go back to school sports, we will get things right. 20 years ago at Seoul ’88 Olympics, we came back with nothing, so that tells you something. And if after 20 years we are still coming back home with nothing, it means that we are not developing our sports. We are only paying lip services to that area of our national life.

"Even at Seoul Olympics, it was not so bad, because we had athletes, who got to the finals of some events, but in Beijing, it was worse. Our boxers could not even score a point before they were knocked out. That shows that we even lack quality coaches and administrators. If not, why didn’t we qualify in the relay event when we had two great athletes?
"We did not send our 4x400m relay squad to run at the Grand Prix so as to assess those athletes in a competitive atmosphere before the Olympics. Our administrators do not even know event schedules and when to push athletes forward to participate in them. Such are some of the administrative blunders our administrators are committing.

"When last did our athletics coaches go for refresher courses, not just going to the National Institute of Sports (NIS)? We have to do courses in modern techniques in coaching, and even when we employ quality coaches, we usually bring them in at the 11th hour. For instance, Innocent Egbunike was drafted to the Olympic team at the last minute. What could he have done within such a short time?

"If we had put our efforts on the relay team for at least one year before the Beijing Olympics, we would have won medals in all the relays. The reality is that we have the talents, but we do not have quality administrators to steer the ship," Udo-Obong concluded.