Tunde Sulaiman
15 July 2008
Lagos — THISDAYSports can exclusively reveal that the Federal Government has finally backed up President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's demand for eight gold medals at next month's Beijing Olympic Games with the release of N1.7 billion to the National Sports Commission (NSC).
The money we learnt was finally released only recently as pressure mounted over the nation's poor preparations for the Olympics and is a far cry from the close to N6 billion requested for.
In fact National Assembly unhappy with the development had previously called on the NSC Chairman Abdulrahman Gimba to quit over the nation's slow build up to the Games.
However, the late release of funds, coming just over three weeks to the start of the Games, has seriously threatened Nigeria's chances of qualifying for the women's 4x100m for the Olympics.
The quartet, which won a bronze medal at the last Games in Athens four years ago, was billed to have competed in a relay qualification race at the Rethimo meet in Athens last night, but was unable to make the trip due to the failure to secure visas.
NSC sources told THISDAYSports that they were unable to start the process for getting the ladies to take part in the race in good time because they did not have the necessary funds to secure schengen visas and book flights for the trip to Athens.
The girls who had previously been ranked 16th, which is the qualification cut off position for competing in Beijing, had slipped just outside this at 17th and had hoped to be able to get the required lift in Greece before the trip fell through.
The NSC is now making frantic efforts to get the team on a flight tonight so that they can make the final qualification race before Beijing, which is taking place at Luzern, Switzerland tomorrow. Should the girls fail to not only take part but also return a good time in Luzern, then they can kiss their chance of going to the Olympics good bye.
The girls' last grasp attempt to make the Olympics is coming on the heels of the failure of the men's 4x400m team to make the Beijing qualification mark after slipping out of the top 20th position on the IAAF rankings.
Unfortunately for them, unlike the 4x100m women, the 4x400m men have no more races to attend in an attempt to still secure a ticket to the Far East next month.
Despite Yar'Adua's avoid public support for sports; the actions of his government leave very much to be desired. For instance the same scenario played its self out in the run up to the 9th All Africa Games in Algeria when government only released funds a week to the start of the games.
Consequently without any proper preparations the host of the 8th edition of the pan-African sports competition slipped from the first position achieved in Abuja to fourth.
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