London — The last batch of members of Team Nigeria to the London 2012 Olympics are being expected today after a fruitless campaign at the summer Games.
Nigeria took part in Table Tennis, Boxing, Taekwondo, Basketball, Weightlifting, Wrestling and Athletics and 51 athletes were taken to London, none won a medal.
Before their departure, hopes were raised as some of the athletes, particularly the likes of Blessing Okagbare (100m, 4x100m relay and Long Jump) and Chika Chukwumerije in taekwondo had shown glimpses of world class athletes Nigerians could bank on.
The Women's 4X400 relay team, the Wrestlers, weightlifters and the table tennis teams were all touted to be medal hopefuls.
When competition began in London, the table tennis players and boxers were the first set of athletes to return from the games. Since their early exit, things never looked up for Team Nigeria as the entire contingent fell in quick succession to better prepared athletes of other competing countries.
As they return today, there will be calls for an inquest as to why the country performed so woefully at the quadrennial games.
Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 USA 46 29 29 104
2 China 38 27 12 87
3 Great Britain 29 17 19 65
4 Russia 24 25 33 82
5 Germany 11 19 14 44
6 Japan 7 14 17 38
7 Australia 7 16 12 35
8 France 11 11 12 34
9 South Korea 13 8 7 28
10 Italy 8 9 11 28
11 Kazakhstan 6 0 3 9
12 Japan 5 14 15 34
13 Netherlands 5 5 8 18
14 Iran 4 4 1 9
15 New Zealand 4 3 5 12
16 North Korea 4 0 1 5
17 Jamaica 3 4 3 10
18 Belarus 3 3 4 9
19 Cuba 3 3 3 9
20 Ukraine 3 1 6 10
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..."things never looked up for Team Nigeria as the entire contingent fell in quick succession to better prepared athletes of other competing countries".
Did I hear you well refering to other athletes as "well prepared" And why should we wait, quote: "As they return today, there will be calls for an inquest as to why the country performed so woefully at the quadrennial games".
My God this is a crazy news! Why do we need an "inquest" when we already know the reason why Nigerian athletes "failed" in London? Mr Onochie Anibeze, you as a journalist as well as fellow Nigerians know the approach of Nigerian government on issues like this. This is a simple logical reason. You have an exam before you, and you consequently prepared for this exam and indeed passed this exam. Will one now wonder why you passed your exam which you so hard prepared for? Ofcourse not. Invariably if you did not prepare well and did not pass the exam it is only natural that people will not wonder why you didn´t pass. Back to the arguement, why other nations are busy investing, grooming, nurturing, incouraging and training their athletes for the olympics, Nigeria? hahahahahaha they´re busy plotting how much will be removed from the budget (if there is any). They´re busy trying to figure out which athlete will be dropped to enable so so official into the contingent. London games is now a history and Rio is already 2 days less from 4 years. While the other nations and their athletes are already thinking of Rio, Nigeria is thinking of "inquest". What you sow... In this case Nigeria gets what he sow. Nigeria lacklustre attitude to issues like ..the olympic, among other things will only encourage athletes to search for greener pasture elsewhere.