The President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, Solomon Ogba, has explained the rationale behind dropping 9 out of the 35 athletes originally penciled down to represent the country at the 2013 Africa Junior Athletics Championship in Mauritius.
According to the AFN boss who addressed journalist in Lagos, the dropped athletes were not truthful about their ages and were suspected to have falsified same on their international passports.
Ogba stated that the Federation has decided to stick with only genuinely young athletes who will be proudly able to fly Nigeria’s flag at the highest level in the no distant future.
According to him, the AFN is not keen at winning at all cost in Mauritius but would fancy nurturing today’s young talent that would in turn be the stars of tomorrow for Nigeria. He said the hard stance on the junior team is just one of the steps being taken to start a rebirth of some sort for athletics in Nigeria.
“One of the first thing we doing; look at the team going to Mauritius for the Africa Junior, we cut them down for 35 to 26 athletes
“We discovered that some of them, their ages are not true ages, somebody can be like 20 while the real age is 34 and for training there is a limit you can go because of the age.
“Let us go to Mauritius even if we do not win we can say we have a pool of athletes that we can call for in the days ahead,” the AFN boss said.
Team Nigeria to the Africa Junior championship will depart the shores of the country on Tuesday for the 4-day event which starts onThursday, August 29 and ends on September 1.
(Premium Times)
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everydayAccording to the AFN boss who addressed journalist in Lagos, the dropped athletes were not truthful about their ages and were suspected to have falsified same on their international passports.
Ogba stated that the Federation has decided to stick with only genuinely young athletes who will be proudly able to fly Nigeria’s flag at the highest level in the no distant future.
According to him, the AFN is not keen at winning at all cost in Mauritius but would fancy nurturing today’s young talent that would in turn be the stars of tomorrow for Nigeria. He said the hard stance on the junior team is just one of the steps being taken to start a rebirth of some sort for athletics in Nigeria.
“One of the first thing we doing; look at the team going to Mauritius for the Africa Junior, we cut them down for 35 to 26 athletes
“We discovered that some of them, their ages are not true ages, somebody can be like 20 while the real age is 34 and for training there is a limit you can go because of the age.
“Let us go to Mauritius even if we do not win we can say we have a pool of athletes that we can call for in the days ahead,” the AFN boss said.
Team Nigeria to the Africa Junior championship will depart the shores of the country on Tuesday for the 4-day event which starts onThursday, August 29 and ends on September 1.
(Premium Times)
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