Philips Adefioye
26 October 2008
Nigeria's first Olympic gold medalist, Chioma Ajunwa has said that preparations for the 2012 London Olympic Games should commence now in order not to have the same experience of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Ajunwa said the best thing the National Sports Commission, NSC and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, should do was to go back to the grassroots system of discovering new talents that would replace the old ones and expose them to IAAF meets.
"One of the most important things National Sports Commission and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria should do was to go back to the grassroots the way it used to be those days. Before the last Olympic Games in Beijing, we advised them to train the younger ones to take over from the ageing athletes. A nation that has abundance of talents and does not know how to manage them would be in a panic situation in bringing them up.
"The most important thing right now is that government should draw a master plan on how to commence preparations for the London 2012 Olympic Games. You saw how China upset the United States due to the preparation they put on ground for the quadrennial event but it is quite unfortunate that in our country we don't like to prepare but we always want to win."
The former African queen of the tracks also described baton exchange as another obstacle affecting Nigerian athletes in most of the IAAF and Olympic events.
"When you want to do something and you don't take preparation into consideration, it will bring bad result because planing is the father of preparation. We didn't plan very well and enough training was not done and moreover baton exchange is more technical. When you put somebody that is going to run the third leg for you and the person is not fast, obviously the last leg will miss it because the last leg and the first leg should be the fastest in the relay team.
"The issue is that we have to have coaches that know what relay is all about because is not every coach that can handle a relay team. That has been our problem even when I was running. At the Atlanta Olympics we lost the baton because the coach was sentimental. He did not select the athletes for the relay on merit. We must have coaches that can do something without fear or favour."
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