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Ghana’s Olympic Games display an
awakening call
(By: Veronica Commey, GNA Sports)
Accra, Aug 26, Ghanadot/GNA -
Ghana’s contingent to the just ended Beijing 2008 Olympic
Games returned without even a “wooden medal” in a manner
that raises questions about the nation’s ambitions towards
making an impact at such global events.
It has been so long since Ghana last made any meaningful
impact at an international sports tournament where the
stakes are high and more than just effort and good
intentions are required to deliver.
Evidently, the performances of countries like Jamaica,
China, among others at the Games brought to the fore the
reality that it takes more than a year or two to build a
glittering team for a no mean event like the Olympics.
Jamaica made waves at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on the
wings of sensational Usain Bolt, Shirley-Ann Fraser, and
Veronica Campbell-Brown among others largely due to the fact
that they understood the true meaning of long-term planning.
The reality that talent alone was inadequate to pile medals
at global championships had obviously been valued for so
long that it was only natural that the fruit of that labour
was to be reaped sooner than later.
If Bolt had gone into the tournament with just raw untapped
talent he would not have broken three World records in
Beijing.
Ironically, this is a truth that has so often dawned on
Ghana but has sadly been pushed to the background in place
of some elusive faith and ad hoc preparation as major
tournaments draw nigh.
Occasionally, the talk about investing in school sports and
laying emphasis on complete planning would emerge and yet
the will for implementation consistently remains still at
birth.
The bottom line is, while Bolt, Fraser and Campbell-Brown
were going through the drills and preparing for future
competitions, we were just content with another appearance
at the Olympic Games where returning home without a single
medal will be no news.
After all, with 11 appearances at the quadrennial games
since 1952, Ghana can boast of only four medals, a silver
and three bronzes.
Boxing has produced three of the medals, Clement Quartey
(Silver, Rome 1960), Eddie Blay (Bronze, Tokyo 1964) and
Prince Amartey (Bronze, Munich 1972) before Sam Arday led
the Black Meteors to bronze at the Barcelona Olympics, 1992,
the first ever medal for African side in football.
Bolt’s talent had been identified at a younger age where his
peers and teachers could afford to name him the “lightening
Bolt” and perhaps made the resolve to prepare that talent
till it blossomed periodically through school to the World
Junior Championship in 2002, in Kingston, Jamaica where he
took Gold in his favourite 200m.
Four years on at an Olympic event where American’s Tyson Gay
and former fastest man on earth, Asafa Powell were on parade
alongside other experienced athletics, Bolt did not only
make a case for hard work and planning, he even smashed his
own record of 9.72 with a time of 9.69 and extended it to
the 200m.
Introducing entertainment to the sport also meant that the
Jamaican who declared just after aiding his team to win the
men 4x100 that the Caribbeans have taken over the tracks had
proven that without polishing, hard work, focus and
planning, he could have ended up like any Ghanaian athlete
who can only hope and hallucinate.
It is amazing why it is taking eternity for a country that
prides herself as a sporting nation to learn that beneath
the layers of hope is the obvious legitimacy that Ghana has
done next to nothing in terms of identifying and nurturing
talents for future laurels.
What is the use of the Sports Associations when they cannot
excel in basic roles like unearthing and nurturing talents
to represent the nation and excel at global events?
Do these associations deserve to exist when they are unable
to even draft short, medium and long-term plans about their
disciplines and deliver?
How many associations can today present a four-year
comprehensive plan for a discipline knowing the Olympic year
comes around every four years?
Have those at the helm become negligent because we have
failed as a country to hold them accountable and accepted
horrible results for so long?
The painful reality is that most of the Associations only
exist in names, with some being occupied by square pegs in
oblong holes!
Year in and out, new talents are seen through the half-baked
Schools and College Sports competition but the furthest any
of those travel is competing once a while in a National
Championship so often dominated by boycotts.
One will have expected that Vida Anim’s performance at her
second Olympics would have been better but talk of
circumstances that has often characterized their
participation at international events and one is tempted to
sympathize with her regardless of her outburst over
financial disagreement during the Beijing event.
Anim must have improved by now because of the experiences
gathered from her maiden appearance but devaluing the
relevance of competing at events that creates exposure and
familiarity with most of the athletes that would be met at
the grand competition can be suicidal.
Bolt is exceptional to have dominated at the highest level
as a debutant, but reasonably athletes with more than one
experience get better. One can however not help but be
reduced to wishful thinking if a first appearance at an
Olympic Games occurs anywhere after 22-years.
Included in the Cameroonian team for the Games was a
12-year-old swimmer, Antoinette Guedia Mouafo, with a
positive forecast that she would stand a strong chance of
becoming a medal hopeful by age 16 when she makes a second
appearance at the event to be staged in London.
Though Antoinette finished the 50m freestyle in 33.59s,
9.39sec behind the fastest time swum by Cate Campbell, she
managed to still leave seven “older” swimmers behind.
There are too many good reasons why Ghana must attach more
seriousness to finding the missing link to her inability to
deliver at the bigger stage and none needs a reminder that
preparing towards making an impact in London 2012 must have
began yesterday. Starting today, however, is better late
than never as the sages say.
GNA
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