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Between Able Paralympians and Disabled Olympians

Written by Adeleke Afolayan

Friday, 19 September 2008

No mistakes have been made, it just is the reality at the moment in the sporting scene of Nigeria following the respective sojourns of Team Nigeria at the 2008 Olympics and Paralympics held in Beijing, China.

Ok, let's do a bit of a recap here. At the Olympics, the sporting pinnacle of "able-bodied" athletes, dear Nigeria finished with a silver and three bronze medals... if only footballers, not the team, were counted on the medals table instead, we then would pobably have had about 20 silver medals but that is but a mirage.

On the flip at the Paralympic Games, the sporting pinnacle of "disabled" atheletes, dear Nigeria finished with one bronze and four silver medals; already surpassing their Olympic counterparts. But the Nigerian Paralympians also won four gold medals to end up as the fifth best African nation and 30th overall at the Games. Now, who is able and who is not able?

If same amount of attention that is on the able bodied athletes, even if not worthy of note, were extended to our very able disabled athletes, we probably would have been ruffling feathers with South Africa, at the Paralympics. That's some 20 gold medals to start with.

So what needs to be done? Simple, give our athletes, able and otherwise, adequate preparation for major and even minor championships or what is the sense of being an athlete if you're not on top of your game.

That however would only become a reality if the administrators of sports in Nigeria get over the syndrome of fire brigade approach to everything and giving excuses of no funds, no sponsorship and all other matters negative...till then, we shouls expect same of the same from athletes Nigerian at the biggest events the world over.

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