My Naija News - Back To The Drawing Board...Again?

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Back To The Drawing Board...Again?

Written by Adeleke Afolayan

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

The 2008 Beijing Olympics for Nigeria was a misadventure with just four medals won on the trail of the usual fire brigade approach to major sporting competitions and lack of organisation.

With a contingent of almost a hundred athletes, including the male and female football teams, Team Nigeria was only able to return home with one silver and three bronze medals.

If we take our minds back to the run-up to the Olympics, Mr. President was told the country was capable of bringing home eight gold medals or how else can his challenge to Team Nigeria to bring home nothing less than those eight medals be explained.

What makes Nigeria's general performance all the worse is the exploits of countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya who have relied on the specialties; the long distance events, and never have been failed.

Kenya finished with five gold, five silver and four bronze medals while Ethiopia fared well enough to gather four gold, one silver and two bronze medals. These medals were won by about a dozen athletes while just five athletes got the seven medals won for Ethiopia.

What's the more amazing is for Ethiopia, the four gold medals came from two persons Kenenisa Bekele in the Men's 5000m and 10,000m and Tirunesh Dibaba in the Women's versions.

Economically and resource wise, these East African nations do not measure close to Nigeria but unlike "the Giant of Africa", the duo know where there strenght lies and have consistently made those events theirs at various international competitions.

Zimbabwe's story is even more inspiring as despite under extreme economic hardship, the Southern African nation through Kirsty Coventry won all the country's one gold and three silver medals.

Away from the African continent, Michael Phelps became the greatest Olympian; at least on the medal count, when he won eight gold medals from swimming and broke the World Record in seven events, seting an Olympic Record in the eighth. This adds to the six gold and two bronze medals he won at the Athens 2004 Games.

There also is Usain Bolt who came from near obscurity months to the Olympics to break the 100m, 200m and 4x100m World Record on his, and Jamaica's way to three gold medals.

On and on the success of individual athletes that lifted their nation and you might want to ask how Nigeria cannot achieve or replicate such success with her own athletes?

It boils down to preparation and how motivated the athletes are to represent Nigeria at major international competitions and ahead of the 29th Olympiad, preparations were next to nothing for our sportsmen and women. And for motivation, we all saw US President George Bush at the Water Cube to see Phelps make the Yankees proud but there was nothing of such for even the Dream Team IV.

Because of the "lack of funds" to take part in qualifying competitions, Nigeria had only four boxers, all brushed aside in the first round at the Games and was only able to present a Women's 4x100m relay team after another competing countries withdrew.

The Men's 4x400m team however had no such miracle befall them and remained out of the Olympics due to being one place outside the Top 16 relay teams in the world; a place that could have been obtained had they participated in a couple of competitions just before the deadline.

Then though, the relay teams along with a few individual athletes such as Vivian Chukwuemeka in the women's Shot Put were not granted entry visas into Greece where the final competition before the Games would hold, a situation that brought tears to Chukwuemeka who would have been a medal prospect with much better preparation.

One wonders if Samson Siasia had not been coach of the Dream Team IV, the side would have had the training camps in Portugal and South Korea or would have won the Malaysia invitational before the Olympics.

Perhaps if officials of the N.F.F had submitted the team's US visa application to that country's embassy on any other day but the fourth of July, Siasia would have prepared a bit more and might just have won gold...the line between success and failure is quite a thin one though the Dream Team's exploits cannot be tagged a failure.

That of the Olympic Falcons can though. With her reputation of African unbeatable, World beatable preceding, the Falcons played gallantly (as always) and returned home early (as always of recent).

A few weeks preparation couldn't have taken the Falcons to the next stage of world football, it only brought the promising talents to fore yet again but like Arsenal in England, the team lacked the much needed experience that could have been provided easily with Florence Omagbemi and Mercy Akide; both of whom were in fine form and yet were overlooked for invitation by the Federation.

The list goes on and a few things can be derived as the problem of Nigeria's consistent tendencies to flop on the world stage, these are administrative disorganisation and lack of preparation, real preparation.

There is no need to go back to that fabled drawing board, it is most likely broken. If the US failed and would have to go back to something to map a way forward, it would certainly be something much more advanced than a "drawing board".

Let us advance ourselves and just try preparing well enough for tournaments and maybe, just maybe Team Nigeria won't exceed Atlanta '96...till then though, they are what we have, let us work with them.

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