- Odds stacked against Team Nigeria
Here we go again! The Olympic year is here. The world is in Rio, Brazil, warming up for another showdown at the venue where the next Olympic Games history is about to be written.
Over 10,000 athletes from 206 countries, including promising athletes from Nigeria, are billed to compete for 4,924 medals across 42 sports in the next few days.
From the track and field to the taekwondo arena, new champions will be crowned, while new legends will be made. Team Nigeria, in spite of the poor preparations it had, will also hope to have its representatives mount the podium of honour.
In an appraisal of some of the athletes that will showcase their talents at the Games, The Point attempts a list of some of the stars it believes will be celebrated.
Expectedly, Jamaican Usain Bolt, may rewrite history as the world’s fastest man in 100 metres, 200m and in relay 4x100m.
Bolt, now 29, has had his share of injuries this season and was forced to pull out of the Jamaican trials with a minor hamstring tear.
He will face stern competition in the 100m from Justin Gatlin – the man whom Bolt defeated by 100th of a second at the World Championships in Beijing last year.
Gatlin, who was banned for doping earlier in his career, posted the fastest time of the year during the U.S. trials after running 9.80. However, Bolt remains confident as ever.
In this segment, Team Nigeria has only one athlete to look up to in the sprint event. She is Commonwealth champion, Blessing Okagbare Ighoteguonor. She is the only Nigerian athlete capable of pulling the string when the chips are down, depending on her level of preparations.
Most of the 78 athletes representing Team Nigeria have not engaged in any serious preparations. Nigeria will be represented in 10 sports, including basketball, football (both men), athletics, table tennis, boxing, weightlifting and wrestling.
There have been no rigorous training camps. Nigeria is known for late preparations, though members of the team always manage to win accolades based on individual performances.
Apart from the 1988 Seoul Games, when the country failed to win any medal, few medals came from the Barcelona ’92 Games, when the Team Nigeria secured three silver and one bronze. The best outing came in Atlanta ’96, where Nigeria won her first gold medal through Chioma Ajunwa (long jump) and the soccer Dream Team. It also had one silver and three bronze medals. At London 2012, Nigeria was one of the 119 countries out of 204 that didn’t win anything.
Preparations ahead of this year’s Olympics have been poor. As at press time, there was crisis in the Wrestling camp, as officials demanded for the inclusion of training partners who were dropped due to insufficient funds. The Under-23 team, known as the Dream Team, suffered a similar fate until the last minute of their camping exercise in Atlanta Georgia, USA.
The John Mikel Obi-led U-23 team was stranded until Tuesday before they moved to Rio. With only two days to get accustomed to the Rio turf where they are billed to play Japan, the team will need extra motivation to keep hope alive.
The Basketball team lost 66 -110 to USA in a pre-Games duel but their officials believe it was a good match to prepare Nigerian team. And with all these, Team Nigeria appears done in for a reward for poor investment in the Olympic preparations.
A cursory look at how the nations in the West prepared for the Games, showed that they invested so much in their athletes to get good results at the global stage.
When Britain discovered it was lagging behind its peers at the Olympics, it turned things around with a massive investment in athletes. The country came up with an eight-year cycle of investment to get results by funding each athlete to the tune of £60,000 annually.
Along with its partners, it invested £543 million in giving assistance to 1,300 athletes for the 2013 to 2017 cycle for the Rio Games.
Due to Nigerian officials’ lackadaisical attitude to a competition of this magnitude, many athletes changed their nationalities to other countries. Even those who were born outside Nigeria decided to represent the countries of their birth at the Games.
Meanwhile, the U.S. will be hoping to dominate the swimming events and with Katie Ledecky in a sensational form, it’s difficult to see others getting a look in.
The 19-year-old Ledecky, who won Olympic gold in the 800m in London four years ago, has set 11 world records and won every major international race she has competed in. She holds world records in the 400m, 800m, and 1,500m freestyle and is going for gold in the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyles in Rio.
Ledecky will face competition from teammate Missy Franklin who won four golds and a bronze in London at the age of 17.
While Ledecky and Franklin are heading for their second Games, Michael Phelps will compete in his fifth.
The 22-time medalist, who has won 18 golds, had quit the sport after London 2012 before returning two years later. He will be up against Ryan Lochte who has won five Olympic golds and 11 medals in all. The pair will go head-to-head in the 200m individual medley.
And make sure you keep an eye out for Adam Peaty, who is aiming to become the first British man to win Olympic gold in the pool in 28 years. The 21-year-old is hot favourite and could be one of the stories of the Games.
Two years ago, it all ended in tears for Neymar and Brazil’s footballers as they crashed out of its home Football World Cup at the semi-final stage.
Thrashed 7-1 by eventual champion Germany, the nation went into meltdown over its biggest football failure since 1950.
This time around, Neymar is back to help lead his country to Olympic gold, a feat it has yet to achieve.
The five-time World Cup winner was beaten in the final by Mexico at London 2012 but it is fancied to go one better this time round.
After claiming silver in Beijing four years earlier, Kohei Uchimura held his nerve to underline his credentials as one of the best gymnasts on the planet. He’s won four silvers in all, while he has 10 world championship golds to his name.
By the time the Olympics heads to his home country of Japan he will be 31 but don’t bet against him going into those Games as reigning champion.
While Uchimura has seen it all before, U.S. sensation, Simone Biles is preparing to make her debut at the Games, but with the extra pressure of being huge favourite for gold. The 19-year-old became the first woman to win three consecutive all-around world titles when she won gold in Glasgow last year.
She has won 14 medals at the world championships in all, 10 of those gold, and will also spearhead the team event.
Biles will challenge defending champion, Gabby Douglas who won the all-around event four years ago and was part of the U.S. team which won gold in London.
While Biles is making her debut at 19, Uzbekistan’s Oksana Chusovitina is set to become the first female gymnast to compete at seven Olympic Games.
While the Olympics play host to all the usual sports, there are a number of new events or returning events in Rio this year.
Lydia Ko is hoping to become the first woman to win a gold medal in golf with the sport returning to the Games for the first time since 1904, an event in which only men competed.
Rugby Sevens makes its bow at the Olympics with New Zealand and Fiji expected to do battle for the title in the men’s competition, while Australia is favourite in the women’s.
Elsewhere, British trio Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah are all hoping for a repeat of 2012’s “Super Saturday” where they all won gold.
Ethiopia’s Genzeze Dibaba, the 2015 Laureus female athlete of the year, broke three world records in two weeks, setting new marks in the 1500m indoor, 3000m and two mile indoor events last year. The 25-year-old will be going for gold in the 1500m.
