Recurring failure at Olympics

In the days leading to the just-concluded Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil, not a few Nigerians were sceptical about the chances of Team Nigeria putting up a good showing at the Games, let alone winning medals. And their fears were not unfounded.
While other nations and athletes prepared for the Games well ahead with structured programmes and resources, the same did not apply to Nigeria. Soon after the team returned from the London 2012 Olympics, where it failed to win a single medal, everyone, it does seem, went to ‘sleep.’ And when what seemed like preparations eventually began for the Games, it was shoddy and uncoordinated.
Team Nigeria was in crisis. There were no funds to train. This was beside other logistics issues. Some athletes even publicly solicited funds to go to Brazil via the social media. Days to the event, the Under- 23 football team, popularly called the Dream team IV, led by Coach Samson Siasia, were stranded in Atlanta, United States, where they were believed to have gone for training. The list goes on.
So when the Sports Minister, Solomon Dalung, began to sound upbeat about the chances of Team Nigeria ahead of the Rio Games, many aficionados were quick to differ.
“If all things change, the law that states that ‘what a man sows, he reaps’ will not change,” one analyst said in reference to what will become of Nigeria at the Games.
When curtains were drawn on the Games last weekend, Nigeria had succeeded in winning just one bronze, courtesy of the U-23 football team. The medal placed Nigeria at the 78th position out of 87 participating nations on the medals table.
The consequences of ill-preparation for major sports competitions have always stared at the nation for long. In the recent past, Team Nigeria returned from the 2004 Athens, Greece Olympics with two bronze medals, performing worse than the three silver medals won in Sydney, Australia in 2000. In 2008, in Beijing, China, Africa’s most populated nation returned with two silver and two bronze medals. At the London 2012 Olympics, there were no medals at all. In the build-up to the London Games, just as it happened this year, the then Sports Minister, Mr. Bolaji Abdullahi, had also boasted that Nigeria would win over 10 medals. But after the Games, he said Nigeria “must see the outcome as an opportunity to rebuild.”
To be sure, succeeding at any sports event is not always a game of chance or luck. Often than not, it is a result of painstaking preparations and effort on the part of all concerned – athletes, coaches, officials and the government.
In fact, in some countries, there are national policies that mandate every sitting government to treat sports as business rather than a social responsibility or something just to engage the youth.
Britain, for instance, invested £60,000 annually per athlete. Along with its partners, the government invested £543 million in assistance to the 1,300 athletes that participated at the Rio Games. Little wonder, the United Kingdom finished second behind the eventual winner, USA with 67 medals, having amassed 27 gold, 23 silver and 17 bronze medals.
While Nigeria grapples with tales of failure, even smaller nations in terms of population, delight in having invested so much in their citizens to get good dividends.
Clearly, our inability to shine at sports meets is not for want of talents. It is simply because of lack of planning and preparation. Nigeria, undoubtedly, has the best reservoir of sportsmen and women anywhere in the world.
The testimony to this could be found in the number of athletes of Nigerian descent, who, shortly after taking up nationalities of other nations, go on to conquer the world. Francis Obikwelu, who now runs for Portugal, and a host of others who participated at the Rio Games, are classic examples.
Critics have called for the resignation of the sports minister, Dalung. But the recurrence of the poor performance in Rio goes beyond Dalung. The performance reflected the level of preparations Nigerians had.
It takes a minimum plan of four years to prepare for the Olympics. Until Nigeria consciously decides to take sports serious and put in place a rolling plan that outlives successive governments, the sort of misadventures we experience at sports events may never stop. And as the world looks forward to the next Games in Tokyo, Japan, will it be a favourable story for Team Nigeria? Time will tell.