By Uzor Odigbo
As AFN train moves to Ado Ekiti this weekend, athletes are already preparing for a wholesome performance that will tell the story of intent for an Olympic qualifying time.
A huge number of athletes ran new personal bests on the track in their first competitive race of the year as analysts believe it is a positive sign of what to come if the athletes are given the motivation and competition required.
The analysts posited that the performances at the AFN All-Comers event remains the talk of town because athletes running that fast in only the first competition of the year means there’s more gas in the tank.
This is great encouragement for us asking the Athletics Federation of Nigeria to provide more competitions for them such that they can perform to their optimal best,
Coaches Tony Osheku, Brown Ebewele, Buka Tiger, Gabriel Okon and athletics statistics guru Samuel Fatunla extolled the competitive spirit in the athletes and concluded that Nigeria track and field will blossom if the tempo of competition is sustained.
Seasoned athletes like Emmanuel Arowolo, , Orukpe, Enoch Adegoke, Praise Edemadudu, Isah Salihu and others believe they would open their account in Ado Ekiti where money will speak.
Toast of the field and the crowd delight, Ifeanyi Ojeli of Making of Champions track club ran a first ever sub 21 seconds of his young career, racing past the finish line in 20.94 seconds.
The performance shot him to the roof of the list of Nigerian performances released by the AFN and the fifth fastest in the world so far this year.
The young quarter miler was modest in his optimism when he said “I just want to get the job done and hopefully in Ado Ekiti (which come in the next five days) I will try to improve on this”.
Ojeli continued from where he stopped last year when he ran 45.91 seconds in the 400m, his first quarter mile race inside 46 seconds when just about a year earlier,he was struggling with a 46.9 seconds.
Another athlete who ran a new personal best is Favour Ofili, the University of Port Harcourt undergraduate student who improved her time in the 200m from 23.24 seconds achieved in 2019 to 23.07 seconds in only her first race in 2020. Ofili is now the fastest Nigerian 200m athlete so far this year and the second fastest in the world. She looks on course to becoming the eighth Nigerian woman to run a sub-51 seconds over the 400m in the Nigerian all-time list. Currently ranked 16th in the 400m, Ofili ran a new 51.51 seconds personal best at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar to top the Nigerian list last year. ‘With Ofili and a couple of our athletes who opened their campaign this season with 54 seconds runs, analysts believe it could get them to improve to a sub 52,51 seconds before the African Championships in Algeria in June and get the qualifying time to qualify for the Olympics in the 4x400m.
In the women’s 100m, Nzubechi Grace Nwokocha ran an 11.52 seconds lifetime best to race to the top of the Nigerian list. Her 11.37 seconds performance in the final was aided by a massive 7.6mps trail wind while Glory Patrick won the 400m in a new 54.50 personal best, beating her previous time of 54.88 seconds set in 2017. Her post race remark reels ‘We are confident more personal and world leading performances will be achieved in Ado Ekiti at the end of the month when the first AFN Classics holds at the Oluyemi Kayode stadium,’ the analysts challenged Ojeli to again race to a new personal best to honour the late Oluyemi Kayode, a member of the silver medal-winning Nigerian 4x100m quartet to the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona,Spain who died in a car crash in October,1994 in Arizona, United States of America. The Ado-Ekiti stadium was named to honour the memory of the Ekiti indigene who placed seventh in the 200m at the 1992 Olympics.
Athletes must also prepare the tracks in Ado Ekiti.. the track not laid today could be enemical to running fast times.. But Analysts were of the opinion that being an old track like the one in FUTA Akure records can also fall if well managed.
It was also noted that athletes registration should be concluded on time to make event time possible.
In Akure, owing to the upsurge of intending athletes, registration overlapped the event time which caused a huge delay in starting most events.
AFN technical department had a hectic time but did a mervelous job in making sure that all registered athletes competed.