Nigerian wrestlers in 2019 lived up to expectations as they hope for better things in 2020 with their performances.
Already, President of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF), Hon. Daniel Igali has hailed their performances, de­scribing 2019 as a ‘very good year’ for the sport.
While speaking in his office in Yenagoa, Hon. Igali, who is also the Sports Commissioner in Bayelsa State, added that the wrestlers, who won lots of laurels at both continental and global championships this year, performed incredibly well and deserve commendation.
“I think till date, the performances of the Nigerian wrestling team this year were prob­ably the most outstanding of the past seven, eight years,” he said.
“Starting from the African Championships (in Tunisia) where, again, our women be­came overall African champi­ons for the 7th time in a row, and then, looking at the 12th African Games (in Morocco), where we again dominated not only as a female team, but as the overall best team in Africa in fe­male wrestling, male wrestling and Greco Roman by coming home with seven gold medals.
“Then to the World Champi­onships in Kazakhstan, where Odunayo Adekuoroye (57kg) qualified for the Olympics by winning a bronze medal; a historic bronze medal. She’s, without a doubt, become the measuring rod in Nigeria Wres­tling Federation, winning three medals within four years at the World Championships. That is outstanding, and you can’t real­ly take anything away from her.
“Blessing Oborududu (68kg) at the same competition (at the World Championships in Ka­zakhstan) was just one placing away from qualifying for the Olympics. She placed seventh instead of sixth.
“And Mercy Genesis (50kg) won a silver medal at the World Beach Games (in Doha), while Blessing Onyebuchi (+70kg) became our world champion in Beach wrestling by winning a gold medal. And those were the two medals Nigeria won out of the team that was presented.”
Still reflecting on the achieve­ments of the wrestlers this year, the Olympic and world cham­pion added that it would be difficult to surpass their feat considering the lean budget the federation operates on.
“As we speak, we have two athletes ranked in the top four in the world,” he noted. “Bless­ing Oborududu (68kg) is No. four and Adekuoroye Odunayo (57kg) is No. two.
“And I doubt if there is any other sport, outside of Paralym­pic sports, that has two athletes ranked in the top four in the world.
“Those are just the competi­tions that have come off the top of my head. If we are to look at the Grand Prix (ranking) tour­naments we had in Germany and Bulgaria, where we had our athletes win internation­al medals, that goes to tell me that we had a very good season. A season that will be hard to replicate, especially when you compare the level of funding we have against what we’re able to achieve as a federation.
“So, looking back, I will say this is a very good year for Ni­gerian wrestling,” the vice pres­ident of the Commonwealth Wrestling Board concluded.
Not Yet Uhuru For Basketball
Basketball is one of the sports that truly did the nation proud internationally, if the perfor­mances of the nation’s men and women teams are anything to go bye.
The men team, D’Tigers qual­ified for the 2020 Olympics by being the best African team at the last World Cup that held in China where it defeated the host team in its last game to pick the sole African ticket.They placed 17th in a 32 team tournament.
At the beginning of the year, the team was the first Afri­can country to qualify for the World Cup winning their first nine qualifying games on the bounce.
D’Tigress, the women team retained the Afrobasket title beating Senegal, the host na­tion, in the final 60-55. It also picked one of the tickets for the 2020 Olympics qualifying Tournament in Mozambique in November.
D’Tigress are grouped with the hosts Serbia, world cham­pions USA and Mozambique in the same group for the tourna­ment, from which three tickets will be won for next summer’s Olympiad. To qualify for the tournament, D’Tigress need to win just a game and they are ex­pected to beat fellow Africans, Mozambique.
And ahead of the event in February, D’Tigress coach, Otis Hughley named 14 players that will resume camping at the start of the year.
Reacting to the draw which pitched them against USA, President of the Nigeria Basket­ball Federation (NBBF), Ahmed Musa Kida, said qualification for the 2020 Olympics was pos­sible despite admitting that it was a difficult draw.
“Being drawn against world number one (USA) and seven (Serbia) surely will not make the job easy but I am optimistic that qualification for the Olym­pics is possible,” Kida said.
“We know that tournament of this magnitude costs money, time and proper planning. We are going to be working with the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development, the Honorable Minister, Hon. Sunday Dare to ensure that we return to the Olympic Games,” he said.
He went further: “The men have already qualified and all eyes are on our women to also join their counterpart in Tokyo. D’Tigress are the reigning Af­rican Champions and we hope this will count for something when they start the qualifiers,” he said.
Of course, one knows that to go unbeaten in four years with an incredible 16-0 record has handed Nigeria the undisputed crown of African basketball and yet according to captain Adaora Elonu, D’Tigress are just getting started.
Back -to-back FIBA Women’s AfroBasket champions, they targeting a place at the high ta­ble of the world stage and to do that, they need to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and com­pete at that level.
Such an accomplishment is not a walk in the park. If any­thing, they will have to be on top of their game to achieve this target and further chase their dream to conquer the world.
In an exclusive interview with FIBA.basketball, Nigeria Elonu said, “ We needed this to continue to fight for a chance to attend the Olympics.
“For Nigeria, I think it means that we are making them proud. We work very hard and are still working to reach our goals. Ni­geria has been very supportive of our success and we are glad we have been doing well thus far.
“It has been great. Many ups and downs at times where the players and staff have had to preserve and showing this re­cord makes it seem worth it.
“The next level will be anoth­er challenge. These windows are difficult for all teams. Not much time for preparation and review.
“Our team has dealt with lit­tle preparations for many years and it is a luxury we know that can be very valuable. We are ex­cited and ready to see our place­ment and country and have one mind there,” Elonu explained further.
“We are blessed and it will be an amazing achievement for us to reach the Olympics. It has always been on the mind of the federation and players and the opportunity is getting near. Talent can be abundant but having a good coach and players who have a similar mindset is what is critical.”
Following their impressive outing at the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup 2018 in Tenerife, Spain, Nigeria are hungry for more internation­al exposure for it gives them cult status in Africa.
Their improvement in the way they approach every game is visible to anyone with eyes that can see and it is this exact reason that keeps them on their toes wanting more and more.
Elonu highlighted that when she said, “It would be fantastic and similar to qual­ifying for the World Cup – a big achievement for Nigeria.
“We have one player who has been there before – Aisha Balarabe – and a flock of oth­ers who want to experience the event and compete.”
However, it is not uhuru for the sport as domestic success fail to match the internation­al successes. The division one league has failed to be orga­nized as expected die to the lingering division in the fed­eration. Several of the clubs hold their allegiance to the former board which has po­larized the home front.
Even at that Kida has vowed to ensure that the league will bounce back in a big way.
According to him, re-or­ganising the league from the lower division was very im­portant.
To this end, Total Nigeria is sponsoring the second di­vision of the league, a league that has never gotten sponsor­ship in the country.