The Tokyo 2020 Olympics that held in July and the just ended World Athletics U20 Championship in Nairobi, Kenya presented two contrasting narratives about Nigerian sports. One was dismal, the other a big success story. And who other than the minister of Sports, Sunday Dare, it was to appreciate the constrast?
Speaking Sunday in Abuja, the minister hailed the athletes did the nation proud in Kenya. He described their performance “record breaking”. They won 4 gold and 3 bronze medals to place third on the final medals table.
Dare said the athletes had returned Nigeria to “ global reckoning” in track and field sports. “I want to specially congratulate the athletes and their coaches for achieving our best ever performance in the history of the Championships,” he said. ”These young athletes deserve our respect for representing Nigeria so very well. Congratulations to our young athletes on their record-breaking performance at the World U20 Athletics Championships in Nairobi, Kenya. “Through their excellent performances Nigeria earned a third place on the medals table out of 114 countries that participated. This third position places Nigeria on the map of world athletics and signposts a new trajectory for athletics in Nigeria,” he said.
The minister promised the team would be kept together so that they could end up as Olympic medallists “like their predecessors who also cut their teeth through this championships,” he said. “We will keep this team, and train them. We will design a programme for them and have them prepared for more victories. We have started building a new and younger generation of Nigerian athletes. There is much hope. We thank President Muhammadu Buhari for his continuous support for sport development in Nigeria.”
Dare said the Kenya experience was a new new beginning for Nigerian sports. “This is truly a new beginning for sports in Nigeria. We started by rewriting our bad record at the Olympics since 2008 by not only winning two medals but also getting as many as five athletes in the finals of their events. It was a clear departure from what we had at the 2012 (London) and 2016 (Rio de Janeiro) Olympics where we won just a bronze medal and produced just two individual medallists in two Olympics. At the World Athletics U20 level, the last time Nigeria won a gold medal was in 2008. For 13 long years we have struggled to win another gold. Now we have won not one but four, the most in one edition and have an unprecedented seven medals to make the Nairobi 2021 Championships truly our best ever performance.”
Those young athletes indeed have rewritten a story of disgrace to one of glory. In Japan, we placed 70th with our 2 bronze medals and a couple of sleazes. Kenya took us to third in the world. Congratulations to those young compatriots.
