Olympics
Nigeria’s catastrophic results at the Olympics make headline in Europe
Not only Nigerians back home are disappointed about the results obtained by Team Nigeria at the Paris 2024 Olympics, it was also shocking to foreign observers.
One of such is reflected in a report carried by Inside The Games, an Olympic news website being run by Vox Europe Investment Holding Ltd. The story written by Claudia Saez, it runs thus:
“With no medal haul for the first time since 2012, the faltering performances of Nigeria’s contingent in Paris failed to live up to pre-Games expectations.
As in previous Olympics, it seems like an indictment of the country’s consistently inept sports administration.
With the exception of the women basketball team, D’Tigress, who qualified for their first-ever quarterfinal at the Olympic Games after a thrilling 79-70 win over Canada in their final group B match on Sunday, Team Nigeria’s wobbly performances at the ongoing Paris Games persists with the country’s athletes crashing out of 10 events they entered for.
The fact that the country did not win a single medal for the first time since London 2012 seems like evidence in the reckless exclusion of the nation’s national champion and only medal hopeful, Favour Ofili, from the women’s 100m race.
While smaller nations on the continent came home with multiple medals, the Giant of Africa left empty-handed for the first time since the 2012 London Olympics. Despite fielding continental champions like 100m hurdles record holder Tobi Amusan, Africa’s most populous nation did not live up to Olympic expectations.
A day after the Olympics closed, former and current Olympians lashed out at the country’s sporting federations calling for a shakeup in organisations they say failed their athletes. “I must apologise to our compatriots and reflect on what went wrong,” Sports Minister John Owan Enoh said on social media after Paris.
He said when he assumed the ministry less than a year before the Games, he learned that Nigeria’s Olympics preparations had not even started. “As a country, we deserve more,” he said. “Let’s turn the disastrous outcome of the 2024 Olympics to a huge positive for Nigerian sports.”
Nigeria’s best haul in the Olympics was in Atlanta in 1996 when the team won two golds, one silver and three bronzes. Beijing brought five medals in 2008, but there were zero in London four years later.
Atlanta Olympics gold medal winner in the long jump, Chioma Ajunwa, said Nigeria’s sporting federations needed a shakeup to bring in sports people who knew what they were doing. “They should stop recycling the old administrative officers that never know what they are doing,” she told Arise News channel. “It is quite disheartening that every year, Nigeria will be telling this kind of story.”
Accusations from the athletes
Olympic sprinter Favour Ofili accused officials at the Athletics Federation of Nigeria of leaving her out of the Paris 100 metres race due to administrative failures even after she qualified.
Similar accusations dogged Nigeria during the Tokyo Olympics when a group of Nigerian athletes were unable to compete because they said sporting federations did not release funds to carry out the right pre-Games tests. “I have worked for four years to earn this opportunity. For what?” Ofili wrote on X. “This is not the first time you guys are doing this so don’t think this is over because it’s not.”
Officials from the athletics federation did not respond to calls. But a senior source from Nigeria’s sporting administration told AFP officials withdrew Ofili to let her focus on the 200 metre race. “The decision to withdraw her from 100m was by AFN, but apparently this was not communicated to the athlete,” the source said.
Sports Minister Enoh said he was questioning officials about why Ofili was left out of the 100 metres race. Ofili came sixth in the 200 metres final in her Olympic debut in Paris. Hurdler Tobi Amusan came third in her heat and did not qualify for the final.
Hameed Adio, former 100 metres sprinter and Olympic team captain, said the country needed more preparation and better organisation.
“Until we consider sports as big business and treat it as such and not just a pastime and also see that those running our sports are technically sound, experienced and patriotic, the results will remain as we had at Paris 2024,” he said.
“We have to do away with the ‘fire brigade’ approach to our preparations to the Olympics.”
One bright spot for Nigeria was women’s basketball under the guidance of Rena Wakama who was recognised as Best Female Basketball Coach at the Games for the team’s “incredible run”, according to the International Basketball Federation.
They beat Canada to become the first African team to reach the quarter-finals where they lost to eventual gold medalists USA.
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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