The President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, Chief Solomon Ogba, has declared that, reigning Nigerian athletics sensation, Blessing Okagbare is better than former Nigerian sprint sensations, Mary Onyali and Gloria Alorie.
He said in an interview that, the likes of Okagbares come once in an era.
“It is also unrealistic for Nigerians to compare Okagbare with the likes of Mary Onyali and Gloria Alozie.”
Ogba noted that: “In just two years, Okagbare has ran under 11 seconds for nine times. While those she had been compared with were never this consistent.”
He added that Onyali ran under 11 seconds once in her entire athletics career, the same time with Alozie. No other person has run under 11 seconds since then.
“If we have four athletes running 10 seconds at a time, we will compete well with the USA team. But we are trying our best to get top athletes running 10 seconds to continue to train with her and somewhat put her in a better condition to run faster.”
The AFN boss revealed that the technical team at the International Athletics Federation had tipped Okagbare to win three medals in the 100m, 200m and the long jump each, but the politics of the game robbed her of the medal in the 100m.
“The ideal schedule at such competitions is to have the 100m and 200m in the first three days of the world championships, and then the long jump events hold about three days to the end of the competition. But the Russians wanted to win the long jump hence they played the politics and brought long jump in between the 100m timetable. Eventually, the Russian lady, who had been jumping seven metres this year, did not win the event. If the politics had affected an American athlete, they wouldn’t have allowed the Russians to have their way. But we don’t have anybody in the IAAF council to fight for us so we take whatever is dished out to us.
“We are trying to boost the athletics squad, especially in the men’s category. We have been having problems with the men. Since the exit of Olusoji Fasuba, who was the only star in his time, we have not had anyone to fill his shoes. We have been struggling since then. One of the things we are doing to solve this problem is to have truly young athletes compete in the junior competitions.
“In the junior team that is currently in Mauritius for the African Junior Championships, we reduced the athletes from 35 to 26 because of age cheat problems.
“We discovered that some of them had falsified their ages. Some athletes could be 34 years old but were claiming to be 20. In athletics, there are some training regimes meant specifically for youths, so if a full grown man undergoes such training, it would be counterproductive. Some athletes discovered during the National Sports Festival in 2004 are still claiming to be juniors. We removed these athletes from the team because we’re not desperate to win at the championships. I believe it is better not to win at the junior level than nurture a team that will not yield anything in the future. I’d rather have a junior run 11.70 now and lose and hope to have him run 11.10 in the next two years.
“It is possible to have some of the age cheats winning at the junior level, but that will give us false hope that we’re improving. In two years, we’ll get the result of the decisions we’re taking now. Also, the high-performance centre being set up in Abuja and the IAAF programme in Port Harcourt will definitely yield results in the next two years,”Ogba said.
