2024 Olympics: Use African Games to assess preparedness – NOC
The Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) has called on sports federations to use the 13th African Games to assess their level of preparedness for the 2024 Olympics.
The NOC’s call was contained in a statement by its Public Relations Officer, Tony Nezianya. It called on the federations to test-run their readiness for the 2024 Olympics by using the African Games for both qualification and awareness.
According to the statement, after several postponements, the 13th African Games will finally be hosted by Ghana from March 8 to March 23, 2024, in Accra.
“Before then, the Youth Winter Games will take place in Gangwom, South Korea, from Jan. 19 to Feb. 1, 2024. The Games will offer opportunities for more athletes to qualify for the Paris Games.
“Out of the 29 sports at the Accra Games, eight will be Olympic-qualifying and seven demonstration events.
“It is hoped that Nigeria, which has performed well in past African Games, would use the opportunity to qualify more athletes for the Summer Games in Paris, a city famed as the citadel of love.
“However, currently we have only qualified for eight slots at the Olympics, as revealed. As of today and heading into the Olympic year 2024, our nation has only qualified three in athletics, three in boxing and one each in cycling and wrestling,” NOC President, Habu Gumel said.
He added that the abysmal level of athletes’ qualification was worrisome.
“This is a far cry from expectations, even though we are still hopeful of qualifying more athletes, especially with our Women’s Basketball and Women’s Football teams still engaged in the qualifying series,” he said.
Gumel noted that some of Nigeria’s talented athletes and teams were missing out because they failed to take part in mandatory qualification events leading to the Olympic Games.
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According to him, there is no doubt that the country needs to chart a new course by making a clear departure from the status quo in the drive for better results.
“Right now, the qualification system for both individual and team sports for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is ongoing and as far as the Olympic Games are concerned, a critical take-off point is the qualification tournaments.
“An obvious point worth mentioning has been that qualifying more athletes would not only brighten the chances for a podium finish but build up Nigeria’s quota for an official team contingent to the Olympic Games,” he said.
The NOC helmsman, therefore, appealed to the Minister of Sports to ensure Nigeria would take part in the African Games as well as other qualifying tournaments to improve the country’s strong presence at the Olympics.
“The failure of any Federation, athlete or team to feature in one or more of the qualification tournaments lined up by the International Federations ahead of the Games would mean automatic self-disqualification from the Olympic Games,” said Gumel.
He, however, said he was certain all parties were committed to the success of the nation and were determined to surpass the 1996 record.
Gumel urged the Minister to strengthen the Federations and support them with funding as they were critical to the success of the sports sector.
The NOC’s President pointed out that Atlanta’96, where Nigeria won two gold medals, has remained Nigeria’s best outing to date.
‘’We won other medals of other colours but none came close to the 1996 epochal performance,” he said.
