1 September 2008
editorial
For a nation that prides itself as having invented many modern sports disciplines, Great Britain returned from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the US with just one gold medal to show, the authorities sat down to do some real soul searching. After brainstorming, they came out with a programme dubbed the World Class Performance Plan (WCPP), which was implemented in 1998.
The essence of the programme was to use lottery money to identify talents, give them high class training and sponsor them to world class competitions, to make them rub shoulders with the best athletes in the world. In order not to dissipate resources, a few sporting events were concentrated on. From picking a single medal and placing 36th position in 1996 in Atlanta, Britain took a giant leap by bagging 19 gold medals to place fourth on the medal log behind China, USA and Russia. Britain had really reaped the benefits of its WCPP programme, ten years down the line.
Ghana returned home from Beijing without any medals to show for our efforts. Our performance over the past years in the Olympics competitions has been nothing good to write home about. Anytime our athletes perform terribly at such august tournaments, the radio stations afford Ghanaians the opportunity to do their own post mortems, with the sporting authorities dousing the heated debate by promising good fortunes in the next games. No concrete plans and programmes are put in place till the next tournament comes, and the same cycle continues to be played out.
It is rather unfortunate that Ghana, as a nation, has still not been able to identify her sporting strengths to fully harness the dominance that we can have in such disciplines. Britain, in their WCPP programme concentrated on a few sporting events, such as cycling, where they swept almost 90% of the medals at stake in Beijing. Nigeria took medals in football and the sprints (womens 4x100m), which remains their strength, while Kenya and Ethiopia continue to show their superiority in the long distances.
Where then lies Ghana's sporting strength for our sports administrators to develop and promote, similar to Britain's WCPP programme? We seem to have spread our scarce resources over so many sports disciplines. The National Sports Council has under its ambit some 35 sports disciplines, which include a sport like ice hockey in Ghana. Majority of the sports associations are dormant and seldom hold competitions to revive interest in the game, as they only exist in name.
It is about time that Ghana reclaimed her past glory in sports, by putting in place real programmes and policies to achieve this goal. It might take us some years to achieve our set goals, like the British WCPP did, but we have to remain steadfast on the path we choose.
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