Nathaniel Glory of Nigeria powers home in the 400m hurdles girls in 62.04 PHOTO: Henry Unini
All the gold medallists in Nigeria’s Under-18 team that won the maiden
African Youth Athletics Championships in Warri at the weekend have been
rewarded with N1milllion for doing the country proud.Nigeria won 13 gold, 10 silver and 12 bronze medals to top the
competition that had 33 African countries in attendance at the youth
athletics fiesta in Warri.President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Chief Solomon
Ogba who was elated by the feat of the Nigerian youths, handed out $500
(about N79,000) to each of the gold medallists in addition to their
daily camp allowances.
“These kids and all the other medallists have shown that there is
future for track & field in Nigeria. If in barely one month that we
assembled them for training at the High Performance Centre at the
University of Port Harcourt they can win an African youth competition,
then we need not look anywhere for talents anymore,” observed the AFN
president at the Hotel Excel camp of the Nigerian team on Sunday night.Ogba insisted that his federation has commenced plans to get some of
the athletes with potentials schools in Port Harcourt so that they can
continue their training programme.
“We are going to get some of the athletes schools in Port Harcourt so
that they can continue their training at the IAAF High Performance
Centre ahead of the World Junior Championships and the African Junior
slated for middle of the year in South Africa,” stressed the former
Delta State sports commissioner.
Ugeh Kasie Veronica, who won the girls Javelin gold for Nigeria on the
final day, throwing a distance of 44.33m ahead of Ethiopia's Birinesh
Bire Dubale (40.35m) and Egypt's Aya Mohammed Tawfik Elsaeed Elk
(36.31m) thanked the AFN leadership and promised to continue to improve
in order to win more laurels for the country.“When the president asked us to go out there and do the country proud, I
told myself that a bronze medal will not be good enough from me. That
was why I went for my best that won the gold for Nigeria,” enthused the
SS3 student whose sight is fixed on an Africa junior medal in the event
in Pretoria, South Africa in June.
Meanwhile, the junior athletes who have been in camp for over a month
were Sunday granted one week break to go home to be with their parents
after which they will regroup ahead of the African and global junior
events slated for later this year.Team Nigeria hauled a total of eight gold medals out of the 16 on offer
on the final day of competition to emerge the maiden winners of the
AYAC with 13 gold medals.Egypt, leaders for first three days of competition came second with
eight gold, six silver and two bronze medals. Ethiopia upstaged their
bitterest rivals, Kenya with four gold medals haul on the final day to
bring their total haul to six gold,13 silver and six bronze medals to
pick the third spot while Kenya came fourth with five gold, four silver
and two bronze medals.A total of 16 out of the 33 countries that took part in the five-day championships are represented on the medals table.
No comments:
Post a Comment