Yusuf Ali Urges Sustained Grassroots Talent Hunt

A former Commonwealth Long Jump champion, Yusuf Alli, has advocated the need for a sustained grassroots sports development programme in the country, to nurture budding talents.

Ali told our correspondent yesterday in Lagos that the Athletics Federation of Nigeria’s (AFN) current drive to reposition athletics was a step in the right direction.

Ali was recently appointed as a Zonal Co-ordinator by the AFN, in its drive to harness the talents that abound in the country.

The former champion said it was necessary to go back to the drawing board, to scout for potential “world class talents’’, hence the appointment of co-ordinators to achieve the objective.

He said the only way to regenerate the country’s drive to greatness in the track and field discipline was to revert to secondary schools.

“If you look back to the early beginning of Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, they featured in schools sports, likewise  when I went to the Moscow Olympic, I was still a student”.

“If we can get students to take more interest in athletics, we can produce world class talents in the mould of Bolt. Through such a gradual programme, the recurring incidence of age cheats in sports would be reduced to the barest minimum. We need to get them young.’’

Ali stressed the need for mentoring of athletes from an early stage, to enable them to take the course in their career growth and not deviate to other pursuits.

“We should enact a pyramidal structure of sort, whereby a distilling process is adopted to pick out the very best talents from the thousands invited for the various competitions.

“Nigeria has the same terrain and structure like Jamaica, so I see no reason why we cannot produce more world beaters like them,’’he added.

Ali commended the National Sports Commission (NSC) for its efforts to keep the country’s sports on its feet.