Home-based gamble paid off at CWG –Adeleye

Mr Sunday Adeleye is currently the Technical Director; Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) whose impact so far since the current board of AFN took over last year is tremendous. Immediately he returned from the just concluded Commonwealth Games (CWG) in Australia, Adeleye spoke to IKENNA OKONKWO and PAUL OKAH in Abuja.

Risking home-based Athletes at Gold Coast

I thank the athletes and the players for their support and players. This is the first time we ‘re travelling with about 80 percent of home based athletes. Even when sceptics insinuated they were going for a jamboree, they gave good accounts of themselves. This proves that we’re on the right track and should focus on harvesting the hidden talents in home-based players. Someone like Blessing Okagbare insisted she will only run for the Relay race, while we have athletes in schools that would have represented us. Therefore, we need to develop our home-based players so that if there’s any game that the foreign based athletes can’t take part in, Nigeria can still be represented by the home-based athletes. We were supposed to win more medals, but inexperience counted against us, as many of our athletes were not hitherto exposed to the international stage.

Correcting errors in Australia
We made minor errors like missing the lane and the baton falling on the ground, therefore denying us medals we would have won, but we have started correcting the mistakes. This was the first time many of the athletes, so, after competing against other international athletes from America and other parts of the world, they will be growing in confidence and poise to perform better in the future.

Exploits of Nigerian Jumper vs AFN record
We are barely six months in office and wanted to give a chance to the home-based athletes, which was not so in the past. The last time Nigeria featured a high jumper was in the 1960s, but we brought one at the Commonwealth Games. We also brought a Walk-in Race athlete, which has never happened before in Nigeria. Nigerians should be rest assured that our athletes will show their class at the Championship that will hold in Asaba, because they have competed at the world stage and are now determined.

Okagbare’s controversies
Unlike what is being reported in the media, no athlete was begged to run. Blessing Okagbare wanted to run for the Relays because she was just coming back from rehabilitation and we didn’t want to destroy our own in order to prepare her for future competitions. We dialogue with our athletes to be on the same page and we usually leave out any athlete that doesn’t want to compete in a particular event, that’s after ascertaining the reason for their decision.

A new dawn in Nigeria Athletics
We came to reclaim what we missed at the World Championship, because we ran against the Jamaicans, the English people and Bahamas and defeated some of them. The only people missing out were the Americans and they were not even at the World Championship, so we are optimistic that we will win gold medals at the 2020 Olympics. We won’t throw away the athletes that didn’t win medals, but we will correct one or two things and stay on top of our game.

I’m contented with what I got from my athletes because, for the past ten to fifteen years, we’ve not seen two men running in the 100metres finals, but it happened in Australia. If not for our athlete that was injured, we would have won the gold medal. Nobody believed in them here in Nigeria, but we tried our best, even though our success was hampered by injuries, inexperience and other things. We are doing well; this is just the beginning of a new dawn.

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