Team Ghana and South Africa have picked the Olympics tickets for the Tokyo Olympics at the ongoing World Relays in Poland.
Team Ghana finished second in an identical 38.79s as the Dutch in heat 1 of men’s 4x100m, picking the Olympics ticket for the first time since 2014. While South Africa men’s 4x400m team qualified for Tokyo Olympics after they finished 2nd in the second heat.
Meanwhile, Team Nigeria could not use the ongoing World Relays in Poland as an avenue to pick the Olympics ticket in an event they have comparative advantage. This was due to the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development busy fighting for the soul of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) with the leadership of the federation.
The World Relays in Poland is the official qualification avenue because it is a world Athletics competition, so 16 teams are supposed to compete in the relays at the Olympics, the qualification for the relay started in 2019, the world championship in Doha where Top 8 have qualified for the Olympics leaving 8 other slots.
The world relays, the team that finishes top 8 qualifies for the Olympics making it 16 but then the only window Nigeria can have is that some of the teams that finished top 8 in Poland already finished top 8 in Doha 2 years ago so that leaves us with 3 or 4 slots to fight for any other competition in the US, for example, the only 3 or 4 slots left to fight for will now be based on the time athlete finishes, but the Poland world relays was the second official avenue to qualify, a straight forward way, just finish top 8 you qualify for the Olympics.
So, the teams that are yet to qualify outside Doha and Poland will be based on fastest time.
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