Long jump efforts caused Okagbare’s 100m failure – Aliu

AUGUST 17, 2013  

Blessing Okagbare’s poor finish in the women’s 100 metres event at the IAAF World Championships in Moscow has been blamed on the schedule of events which put the long jump final a day before the sprint event.

Okagbare on Sunday had six attempts in the long jump as she finished second with 6.99 metres, two centimetres behind American Brittney Reese’s 7.01 who won gold.

Former national men’s 100m champion, Deji Aliu, said the pressure of competing in the long jump took its toll on Okagbare, causing exhaustion when it mattered most in the 100m dash.

Okagbare, who currently has the African record of 10.79 seconds set in London last month, ran 11.04 in the final in Moscow to finish fifth in the race.

“It was a technical error on Nigeria’s part, but there was nothing anyone could have done about it because we all wanted her to win the long jump as well as the sprint events,” Aliu told our correspondent on the telephone on Thursday.

“The long jump is one of the hardest events in athletics because the athlete will have to run about 30 metres before making the jump. In making six attempts in the long jump, she would have run 180 metres in addition to the jumping and the landing. That is a lot for a woman.

“She would have had a better result in the 100m had there been enough time for her to regain her strength and composure.”

Aliu, however, still had praise for her as she won a medal, ending Nigeria’s 14-year medal drought at the World Championships.

“She is actually the best athlete we have today so we must celebrate her. Unfortunately, the rest of the team have not been impressive at the championships,” he said.

“I’ll blame the administrators in the Athletic Federation of Nigeria for the team’s failure because they have not been looking at the grassroots to get new athletes for the country. It was not like this in my time; the AFN adhered strictly to the developmental programmes and it yielded results.”

He added, “The Nigerian men were nowhere near making an impression in Moscow, and we cannot blame them, because they were ill-prepared. The team did not have any camping towards the World Championships, so how would they have been monitored in their activities.

“With what I saw in Moscow, I don’t expect much from the team at the 2014 Commonwealth Games next year. Save for Okagbare, there is no progression in the team. But we can actually start to make the change now if we must make a decent showing at the 2016 Olympics in Rio.”