Olympic superlatives by Obiwu

I wouldn’t bother with the forgettable wobble of the
Nigerian contingent that went to the 2012 London
summer games. Why? That is simple: The group
acted as if the world owed it a favour with its
substandard, charity athletes. The worst of all was, of
course, a basket case (pun intended). The so-called
Nigerian ‘D’Tigers’ somehow miraculously defeated a
ramshackle Tunisian basketball team that had just
come out of the devastations of the Arab Springs.
And then a latter-day American ‘Dream Team’
drubbed the feathered tigers like a Christmas samba
to the count of 156-73, a record-setting victory
margin in the Olympics history of the game. Yet,
some well-meaning Nigerians actually think the
Nigerians should be hailed for just showing up at the
games. Ayodele Bakare, the team’s coach, said as
much: “If people really knew the story (of what the
team had gone through), it would be an
accomplishment in itself, just us making it here.”
According to The New York Times’ Greg Bishop, part
of Bakare’s job as coach included team’s general
manager, insurance agent, travel secretary, and
nurses’ aid in the hospital when one of his players,
Tony Skinn, had to undergo surgery. In other words, a
team of such enormous and disgraceful misdirection
shouldn’t have been allowed to represent any
country whatsoever in a twenty-first century
Olympics.
But meaningless superlatives, of loud names and
louder praises, are always the wont of backwater
communities. After all, the little Caribbean nation of
Grenada was closed down for a drinking and dancing
binge when nineteen year-old Kirani James (AKA “The
Jaguar”), 400m men’s sprinter, won the country’s
first and only Olympics gold medal on Monday,
August 6. When James won the 400m in the outdoor
world championship at Daegu, South Korea, in 2011,
Grenada’s police commissioner, James Clarkson, shut
the streets for celebrations, because it was
supposedly the “most important event that ever
happened” to the country, “even more important
than Christopher Columbus landing.” It’s no wonder
that Prime Minister Tillman Thomas should roll out
large television screens at public parks on August 7
for revelers to lounge around and enjoy the historic
run of citizen James. In a related incident, seven
members of the Cameroonian contingent
disappeared after being eliminated at the games. It
was first a rumour; then it became news that the
half-starved athletes – five boxers, a swimmer, and a
soccer star – had joined the new African
‘underground railroad’ in order to hunt for jobs in
Europe. “Unemployment is a persistent problem in
Cameroon,” a report claimed.
These three incidents have only scratched the
surface of the bane of sports and sports
administration in most Third World nations, among
which are wastefulness, lack of planning, ineptitude,
and faith-without-work. These countries and their
leaders actually believe that God will give them the
gold medals, when First World athletes work through
their bones to compete at the games. Why would any
self-respecting god give a gold medal to a country
like Nigeria, when its basketball team was cobbled
together only six weeks to a tournament in which
such American superstars as Carmelo Anthony, Kobe
Bryant, and LeBron James are playing? Why would
any serious-minded god deny gold to a well-oiled
speed machine like the Jamaican Usain Bolt, in favour
of a country like Nigeria, when a quarter of the
country’s youth who should be training to compete
on the tracks have become bloodthirsty angels oiling
the daggers and bombs of the terrorist Boko Haram?
There was a time when Nigeria and Cameroon had
two of the world’s best soccer teams. It was also at a
time when Nigeria’s runners – Innocent Egbunike,
Chidi Imo, and Mary Onyali-Omagbemi – blitzed
through the tracks as if the turf was paved by their
feet. Now, we have shambles of sports managements
– especially from African countries – that strut ill
equipped and tastelessly clad athletes on the
Olympics arena and yet seriously expect them to
bring home the medals. It has always been true, and
it will never change by mere vacuous desire, that the
god of sports will shine the light on athletes (and
their nations) who rise with the sun, and never on
those who set with the dusk. Third World countries
cannot allow their youth to regress into the shady
path of religious radicalism and empires of
corruption, and yet expect to bring home the bacon
in a global contest of vigorous youth. It is only
shameless and dumb societies that would refuse to
learn the first principle of sports science: that God is
always in league with the contingent of the most
prepared troops.