‘Delta ’ll Remain Defending Champions’

The defending champion of the National Sports Festival, Delta State, says it intends to sustain its dominance at the Garden City Games.

The Special Assistant  (media) to Chairman Delta State Sports Commission,  Timi Ebikagboro, said the State which is participating in all the events, will within the first four  days of the competition , take the lead ahead of other States.

“We are participating in all the games. We came as defending champions and we expected  to leave as defending champions. If we are not ready to win, there is no basis for coming,” said Ebikagboro.

He explained that though Delta State has never hosted the National Sports Festival before, it has always come out  top because the State has a formidable sport administrative structure that is well supported by the government that knows what it takes to run sports and  prepare athletes.

Ebikagboro revealed that Delta’s desire to retain its primacy of the sport festival spurred it to dispatch its athletes that will be competing in high medal games like swimming, cycling, judo, weight lifting among others, abroad for training.

According to him, “We are the only State who took our athletes on a foreign tour for the sports festival. No state did that and so, if Rivers is bringing state of the art equipment from what we heard, we are going to have an edge over their athletes, because they don’t even know what they have. But we know what they have”

He continued, “The equipment are new and others have not mastered it. We have mastered them because we went abroad. Our weight lifters went to Egypt.  Our cyclists went to South Africa.  Our swimmers and judo athletes went to France. If there are any latest techniques ,we should know above other persons .If an athlete trains abroad, it gives him confidence and this aura of invisibility .” That is what we are bringing to the 17th NSF.”

Ebikagboro explained that Delta State which has 524 athletes  competing for medals will capitalise on  high medal sports like  swimming which  starts today , cycling , weight lifting  to take an early lead in the festival.

He said, “these are where the medals are. It is not football or basketball where you use 22 players to win one gold medal.  We have 3 to 4 swimmers that can give us 15 to 16 gold medals. Those are where we think we can do it”

He predicted that by day four of the festival, the winner of the competition will begin to manifest. According to him, his state athletes who he described as properly trained and well motivated, are determined to retain their dominance of the sporting festival.

Ebikagboro explained that athletes from a state  like Delta where there are competing demands, have been provided all that is required for them to succeed by the state government.  It is on this premise that he said the athletes will have no justification not to emerge the winners of the Garden City Games 2011.