By Olalekan Okusan
Daniel Igali is one of the respected wrestling buffs globally right from his hey days as an athlete and even now in retirement. The Olympic gold medallist has also taken the fortune of wrestling in Nigeria to a great height with some of the country’s wrestlers getting international recognition. A member of the United World Wrestling (UWW) Technical Commission Igali noted that that the performance of Nigerian wrestlers at the 2019 World Championship in Kazakhstan is a pointer to the fact that the athletes are primed to win medals at Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan. He spoke with Olalekan Okusan.
Since becoming the President of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF), Daniel Igali has indeed lifted the fortune of the sport in the country. Apart from his passion to see the sport grows, Igali has been working hard to ensure that Nigeria is among the top wrestling nations in the world. Since his emergence as the helmsman in charge of the sport, Nigeria wrestlers have been rated among the top in the world with three medals at the World Championships.
The Olympic Games gold medallist believes sports need the support to help empower the youth.
He said: “Without a doubt, sport in Nigeria generally doesn’t get the needed support and wrestling for sure maybe gets 20 percent of the support it ought to have at out of 100 percent. So there lies our problems and we have athletes in this country and I like to generalize as I don’t want to talk only about wrestling.
“ We have athletes and we should be capable of winning minimum of five medals at every Olympics, if we are a serious country. With wrestling specifically, we have not traditionally had the needed funding and sometimes it’s quite disheartening.
“I think we need to continue the appeal to individuals and corporate bodies as well as government at all levels; the local government, the state and the federal. And I want to make this point very clear that people should not think that sponsorship means you have to spend millions and millions of naira to be a sponsor.
“I personally consider myself a sponsor of the Nigerian Wrestling Federation because on occasions when I have the opportunity to travel I buy wrestling shoes and shirts for the athletes.
“Sometimes I support with tickets to go for competitions as well as money for transport and upkeep of athletes. If we have a company that is prepared to give wrestling shoes, shirts to all the athletes, that is funding. If we have one catering company to feed our wrestlers for two weeks in the training camp that is funding and sponsorship.
“ If we have a bank that is prepared to give an athlete living wages like N100, 000 monthly to support with their training, that is funding and that is what we call sponsorship. So sponsorship at all levels is what we need to encourage.
“The moment the government brings in about 50 percent of the needs of the federation and we get about 20 to 30 percent from the NOC, and we get the others from sponsors, this will surely help the sport.
“I can assure you we have abundant talent in Nigeria. We can also train the coaches, referees and get our people to go to international boards by contesting and wining. With this we are represented at the highest level of decisions making in sports and once we do that, people will start understanding that Nigeria is a serious country.
“Let us not be deceived, people broad are not interested or know who the president or governor in Nigeria is, if you call Nigeria, it is not the politicians that they know; it is our famous sports people. Often times it is our famous musicians, novelists and academia.
“Countries need to have priorities by looking at the talents and the people who go outside to brighten the image of the country. That is why it is important that sports are funded and that is why it is important that Wrestling, the only sport which over the past six years have won three world championship level medals, needs to get the needed funding,” he emphasized.
Igali is not satisfied that Nigeria is yet to pick an Olympic medal but he is determined to make this a reality at Tokyo 2020.
With less than a year to the start of the world’s biggest sporting event in Japan, Igali believes Nigeria has the wherewithal to make it to the podium in wrestling.
“I think our prospect of winning Olympic medal comes down to preparations. We have a few injuries during the 2019 World Championships with Odunayo Adekuoroye twisting her knee.
“Blessing Onyebuchi also twisted her knee at the tournament, so we will give then some time off and we will make sure they have physiotherapists and medical services available to them to ensure that they are fit. Our plan is to bring them back in few weeks as we are going back to Yenogoa in Bayelsa.
“We need to go through all our matches to make the needed corrections and maybe have a one or two week camp to make those corrections so that they are fully addressed by knowing what to do in tight decision.”
However, Igali believes with proper funding for training, medal at the Olympic Games will come without much hassles.
“We need funding for the team and my view is that these athletes need to compete a lot more and I would be very happy if someone like Adekuoroye could have between 25 to 30 matches before the Olympics which is about six to seven tournaments. Virtually everybody on the team needs between 20 to 30matches. If we can get that for them I can almost be rest assured that on a good day we would have couple of medals not even one because they have the talents and the opportunity at this time to win medals. We just need to get to the point where we get them adequately prepared for the Olympics.
“The Olympic is just what it is for a reason as it is every four years and everybody gets ready for it and now in this multimedia age, the moment you wrestle everybody has your tape. Everybody goes back to scout you. They go as far as even measuring how fast your double leg is for reaction times. So it has gotten down to a science and we also have to be part of it as we also have to do the same thing. We need to get our medical team ready for our athletes; we need to gather our team ready in terms of what the team need because athletes at this level have to live in the best circumstances to be able to do well. At that level, it is one point, and that is why what Odunayo does is amazing and that just shows the level of her quality as an athlete. I have every confidence that our athletes are capable to win medals, and on our part as a federation, as well as the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports, we need the needed fund to execute this plan.”
Despite returning home with only a medal at the 2019 World Championship in Kazakhstan, Igali said: “My general assessment on the performance of our athletes in Kazakhstan is very positive. The athletes wrestled very well in fact I returned from the tournament with a renewed hope and vigour that the future especially the immediate future is very bright.
“We won with six athletes made up of five females and one male. Out of the five female, Adekuoroye won a bronze medal and qualifies for the Olympics after a combined score of 42score and conceding only seven points in the whole tournament. Adekuoroye was very outstanding as she was completely dominant in virtually every match that she won including the bronze medal match. So I have no doubt that if we continue our preparations, we are medal hopeful in Japan. Blessing Oborududu was right there almost got the Olympic ticket unfortunately she finished seventh as one the top six qualified automatically. However, if anyone of the six athletes that had qualified in her weight category is tested positive to drugs then Oborududu automatically comes in. Mercy Genesis placed 18th, Onyebuchi Blessing was 14th, and Aminat Adeniyi was 13th.
“So overall, we have a very good tournament as the results and the placing does not accurately portray the fierceness of the competition out there. We were again caught with some things that we will address. I believe that if we prepare accordingly, as we have about three athletes that have a good chance of qualifying to the medal rounds and hopefully even win medals at the Olympics if we train properly,” he added.
“Also our bronze medal in was the only medal any African team won at the World Championship; the closest any other African team got was in the Greco Roman when an Egyptian wrestler who finished 6th position in his weight class qualified to the Olympic Games. So we only had two African athletes that qualified from the world championship to Tokyo 2020. Blessing Oborududu was the third highest ranked wrestler from Africa in this world championship so they did extremely well,” Igali added.
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