Nigeria Content Online

Bruno Gozzelino,
the president of the World Mountain Running Association has said
Nigeria is likely to host one of the biggest outdoor running event in
the next few years.

Gozzelino said this
in Calabar at the weekend. According to him, the Obudu Ranch Resort,
venue of the annual Obudu International Mountain Race, is good enough
to host the federation’s flagship event – the World Mountain Running
Championships.

Conditions

Gozzelino believes
the organisers of the race in Nigeria have also shown a mastery of the
sport and only a few things need to be improved upon.

“I strongly believe
that the Obudu Ranch Resort has a good chance of staging the biggest
competition in our calendar, the World Mountain Running Championships,”
said the Italian.

“In my opinion only
two areas need to be adjusted for the competition to come to Nigeria
and they are the travel arrangements for participants and the terrain
of the Ranch.

“In terms of
travel, I think the Local Organising Committee for the international
mountain race has been doing a perfect job. What the WMRA will only
require is a guarantee and days for accommodation increased to at least
five days.

“As you all know, a
world championships involves a minimum of 500 people around the world
and that is only speaking about athletes and coaches. We still have the
fans, the media and the invited guests.

“So the LOC only
needs to increase the number of rooms and make arrangements for easy
transfer from Lagos to Calabar before the road trip to Obudu.”

Obudu race

The Obudu
Iinternational Mountain Race is organised by the Cross River State
Government, in conjunction with the Athletic Federation of Nigeria.

It enjoys
tremendous support from the African Athletics Confederation(CAA), the
WMRA and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

The race covers a
distance of 11 kilometres uphill to an altitude of 1,575 metres above
sea level, taking athletes to one of the finest tourist destinations in
the world, the Obudu Mountain Resort.

This year’s race,
which has been confirmed for the last week of November, will feature
aside the main race such activities as a Doping in Sports Seminar, the
Media Race, Children’s Race, and a Gala Night/Fireworks.

The main race will flag-off alongside the African Championship at 8.00 a.m on Saturday, November 27.

World number one
Rafa Nadal insists his great rival Roger Federer is no spent force and
on Wednesday backed him to add to his record haul of 16 grand slam
titles.

“He won at the
Australian Open and won in Cincinnati (Federer’s 17th Masters 1000
title), got to the final in Madrid and Toronto … so it’s a good year
for him,” Nadal told reporters at this week’s Japan Open.

“It’s very
difficult to always be 100 percent and what Federer did the last seven
or eight years is almost impossible to repeat. It’s unbelievable.”
Nadal matched Federer in winning all four grand slam crowns by winning
last month’s U.S. Open to move to nine overall and add to the Wimbledon
and French Open crowns he won earlier in the year.

But the Spaniard
warned that it was far too early to write off Federer, who has won 63
career titles but has slipped to third in the world rankings.

“Of course he is
going to challenge to win the big tournaments,” said Nadal, who is
making his first appearance in Japan this week. “He is still – what?
–number two or three in the world and his game is still at a very high
level.”

Nadal and Federer are two of only seven men to have won all four majors and the Spaniard paid credit to the Swiss maestro.

“It’s very difficult to always be at the top,” said Nadal, who is gunning for his seventh title of the year this week.

“What he did is very, very difficult.”

Nigeria’s hopes of
finishing as the best African team at the ongoing Commonwealth Games in
New Delhi India is gradually fading as the country’s athletes continue
to falter in their respective events.

Yesterday, the
country’s boxers were outclassed by their opponents as they tried to
advance at the Commonwealth Games, which enters its fourth day today.

Competing in the
60kg lightweight division, Sogbamu Waheed was pummelled in the
preliminary round of the boxing event as he lost 11-1 to his Pakistani
opponent, Khan Nawaz.

It was the same for
his compatriot Ademuyi Kehinde who lost 7-2 to his opponent in the 69kg
category. Both boxers had earlier been tipped to win medals before
departing for the games.

Their performance
came a day after their counterpart, Ganiu Muyideen, lost to his
opponent and blamed his coach for failing to give him the right
instructions.

Also in the team
event for table tennis, the country’s female team made up of Atinuke
Olaide, Edem Offiong, Effiom Janet and Ogundele Ganiat was ousted by
Singapore; losing 3-0 in the quarter finals of the event.

The woes continued
in the weightlifting event as Eze Ndidi failed to replicate the feat of
her other colleagues, who had won a gold and silver medal, as she
finished bottom of the pack in the women’s 58kg finals. The category
was won by Renu Yumnam of India.

Belly trouble

Meanwhile, two of
England’s top women swimmers on Wednesday complained of stomach
problems, while Australia’s Andrew Lauterstein was forced to pull out
of the men’s 50m butterfly final due to a stomach complaint.

Rebecca Adlington
and Fran Halsall both wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter that
they were suffering from “Delhi belly”, which was affecting their
performances.

“Delhi belly please
go away,” wrote double Olympic champion and 800m freestyle world record
holder Adlington on Wednesday morning.

She later won
bronze in the women’s 4x200m freestyle, her second medal of the Games
after a third-place finish in the 200m freestyle.

But the strain was clearly taking its toll as she prepared for the 800m free final on Thursday.

Also in swimming,
Australia’s Matthew Cowdrey broke his own 50 metres world record with a
winning time of 25.33 which beat his 2008 mark of 25.34, set at the
Beijing Paralympics, by the slimmest of margins.

He also smashed his Games record of 25.66 set during qualifying this year.

England’s Simon Miller finished second in 26.70, while India’s Prasanta Karmakar took third in 27.48.

In women’s hockey,
India’s miserable run continued on Wednesday, with the team losing 2-1
to defending champions Australia at the Major Dhyan Chand National
Stadium.

After splitting
points with Scotland in their opening Pool A match on Monday, much was
expected from India, silver medalists at the last Games, against the
young Australian side, but they failed to live up to expectations
before a moderate crowd.

The defeat put India in a tight position for a semi final berth.
They now need to win their remaining matches against Trinidad and
Tobago and South Africa by big margins to stay in contention.

Lee Westwood will
try to put the Ryder Cup out of his mind and will not be distracted by
the prospect of becoming world number one when he tees off in this
week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

The Briton, a key
member of Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup team, will knock Tiger Woods
off the top of the rankings if he finishes first or second in a
tournament he won in 2003.

“The thing this
week to do is to concentrate on the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
as it’s easy to get distracted and not be able to refocus after last
week,” Westwood told reporters on Wednesday.

“Going to number two on Monday and having a chance to go to number one, I could get drawn towards that as well.

“But obviously if I
take care of business on the golf course this week at the Dunhill Links
then the world No. 1 ranking takes care of itself.”

Great performance

Westwood arrived in
Scotland on Tuesday evening after celebrating well into the morning
following Europe’s stunning one-point victory over the U.S. at Celtic
Manor.

“Everybody was obviously very happy on Monday evening and why not?,” he said.

“It was an incredible Ryder Cup, just about everything and the result in the end showed how close the two teams were.

“The weather almost
added to the drama. Fortunately the result turned out in our favour
through some gritty play. I suppose G-Mac (Graeme McDowell) is the one
that’s been highlighted the most with it being the winning putt, but I
thought it was a great team performance overall.”

The Ryder Cup
finished on a Monday for the first time due to bad weather in Wales and
Westwood said consideration should be given to staging the 2014 event
at Gleneagles, Scotland in September.

“The Ryder Cup is so prestigious and such a big event now that priority should be given to it with regards to dates,” he said.

“Common sense has
to be used somewhere along the line. You can’t know how unreliable the
weather is. Just any help would be good I think. Shift it forward a
couple of weeks. I think September is generally a good month.”

Westwood, 37, is bidding to become the third British player to get
to the top of the world rankings, after Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam.

Ayo Ositelu, one of
Nigeria’s most experienced journalists has advised President Goodluck
Jonathan to call the bluff of world football governing body, FIFA over
its decision to ban Nigeria from all its global football competitions.

Ositelu, former
Sports Editor of The Punch Group of Newspapers, said by banning Nigeria
the way it has done FIFA has shown disrespect to a sovereign nation.

“It is about time
Nigeria called the bluff of the arrogant dictators or self-styled
overlords who delight in issuing threats and terrorising mostly
developing countries on the flimsiest of excuses. I really do not know
how the self-serving opportunists who found themselves running world
football got the idea that the Nigerian government decides what goes on
in the courts of law,” Ositelu said.

“Where was FIFA
when government gave Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) N900 million for
the South Africa World Cup? Where was FIFA when government was
financing all NFF programmes? And where will NFF be without government?
Does FIFA know that corporate bodies do not support sports or football
in Nigeria? It is the government that fund the sport.

“Everybody knows
who is behind all these problems, the same person who has controlled
sports for 20 years with little to show for the government’s massive
investment in sports,

particularly
football. I’m sure the government knows what to do before one man
single-handedly destroys what Nigeria has built for more than seven
decades.”

Fishing out culprits

He said FIFA ought to show Nigeria more respect.

“What is the
problem of FIFA if government say they want to increase the number of
club in the league? If FIFA can do without Nigeria, they should go
ahead so that the country could organise its football,” Ositelu said.

“On June 6, 2006,
when FIFA ordered England, Spain, Italy and Germany to reduce the
number of the teams in their leagues so that players play less matches,
these nations told FIFA to go to hell and why is FIFA concerning itself
with unimportant issues instead of focusing on important issue like
goal-line technology. The tenure of Sepp Blatter as FIFA boss is the
most corrupt in the history of FIFA.”

Ositelu also called for an investigation to expose those behind the nation’s recent predicaments.

“The person or
persons must be brought to book. After all, no person (not even
President Jonathan) is bigger than Nigeria. The sports minister is not
minister of football but of sports, I think the FIFA ban will help us
to focus on other sports… money spent on football should be diverted
to other sports in Nigeria”.

NPL responsible

In a related
development, the National Sports Commission (NSC) has said it is not to
blame for the enlargement of the Nigeria Premier League to 24 teams
from its original 20. Olukayode Thomas, Special Assistant to the Sports
minister, Ibrahim Bio, said neither Bio nor Patrick Ekeji unilaterally
increased the number of teams in the premier league “On the issue of
the league, the decision not to relegate any team was taken by the NPL,
NFF and the club owners, who met in Abuja to resolve the dispute
between Baribote and the NPL. So what is the ministry’s role in that
case?” Thomas asked.

The
ban placed on Nigeria by world football governing body, FIFA, over what
it described as government interference in the affairs of the Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF), may be a blessing after all.

Mary
Onyali-Omagbemi, one of Nigeria’s most accomplished athletes, said this
at a meeting of concerned members of the sports fraternity who met on
Monday to review the state of sports in the country.

“It was what we did
that warranted FIFA to drop the hammer on us. It is one of us that
wrote FIFA that made them come down on us,” Onyali-Omagbemi said.

For her, the ban was not all bad news. She believes there might be a silver lining to it.

“Maybe what has
happened will make us return to the grassroots,” she said. “We must go
back to the grassroots because it is the only way out of this terrible
situation we have found ourselves in. All sports federations in the
country must as a matter of urgency seek to embrace the grassroots
options if we must make any headway.”

Onyali-Omagbemi,
who won medals for Nigeria at the All Africa Games, Commonwealth Games,
and the Olympics during her days as a competitor, said new talents were
not being discovered nationwide. Instead, she said what is happening is
that tired and aging athletes are being recycled.

“We must find a way
out of this mess. We cannot continue like this but first of all we must
accept collective responsibility for what has happened and then chart a
way forward,” she said.

No more negativity

Onyali-Omagbemi said that one of the things to do is to believe in Nigeria.

“We must overcome the tendency to stop being negative about our
country. There are a lot of positives we can take away from Nigeria.
There good people doing great things here and we must always emphasise
that. It is because we keep running ourselves down that bodies like
FIFA always threaten us. It is sad that some people in this country are
writing to organisations like FIFA, IOC etc to drop the hammer on us.
It is very unfortunate,” she said.

The
indefinite suspension placed on Nigeria by football’s world governing
body, FIFA may soon be lifted as the National Association of Nigerian
Footballers (NANF), led by Harrison Jalla, has agreed to an out of
court settlement – regarding the case the association brought against
officials of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

The association had
sued the elected board of the NFF as well as several top officials
including FIFA executive committee member Amos Adamu to the Federal
High Court in respect of the disputed August 26 elections into the NFF
executive committee.

The action was
however contrary to FIFA regulations and was one of the reasons given
by the world body on Monday for its decision to suspend Nigeria from
international football.

In a communiqué
jointly signed by Jalla, Adamu, former Super Eagles defender Taribo
West and five others, NANF agreed to an out of court settlement so as
to “ensure that Nigeria does not lose any of its FIFA-organised
qualifiers” scheduled for this weekend.

The qualifiers
comprise the African Under 20 Youth Championship qualifier between the
Flying Eagles and their Mauritian counterparts, and the 2012 Africa Cup
of Nations match in Conakry between Nigeria and Guinea.

There are however
certain conditions that need to be in place, in the opinion of NANF,
before the next hearing of the case on October 25 in Lagos. Top of the
conditions is that, all the issues contained in the suit filed by the
association must be resolved amicably between all the parties concerned
before the next court hearing.

Nigeria-Guinea game in doubt

Meanwhile, Guinea’s
national team coach Frenchman Michel Dussuyer has said the game between
the Super Eagles and Guinea, scheduled for Sunday has been postponed.

Speaking on
Wednesday morning to French sports magazine L’Equipe from Abidjan, Cote
D’Ivoire where the Guineans are preparing for the match, Dussuyer said
he got a fax from the Guinean FA saying the Nigeria encounter has been
postponed indefinitely.

“No reasons were given. We’re waiting for further clarifications,” Dussuyer said.

The NFF is however in the dark regarding the development.

According to its
media officer, Robinson Okosun, there has not been any official
communication from either the Guinean FA or the confederation of
African Football (CAF). Okosun said efforts had been made by the NFF to
get in touch with CAF’s media head Suleiman Habuba regarding this
development.

There is however a
possibility that the presidential election run-off in Guinea may have
been the reason behind the Guinean FA’s decision to postpone the game.

The presidential
election run-off now scheduled to take place on October 24, was meant
to take place in September, but was postponed after violent clashes
between rival supporters.

A subsequent date
of October 10 – the day the Nigeria-Guinea match was initially expected
to take place – was proposed but was not agreed upon because of a row
over who should lead the electoral commission.

The electoral commission was plunged into chaos last month when its
president was convicted of electoral fraud during the first round. He
later died after a long illness.

Nigeria’s U-18 male
basketball team, the Junior Tigers, will on Friday start its quest for
a ticket to next year’s World Youth Championships coming up in Latvia
from June 30 to July 10, 2011.

The Nigerian team
is one of the twelve African teams competing at the 17th Afrobasket
competition, which begins tomorrow in Rwanda and runs through October
17.

The championships,
which is also serving as a qualifying event for the world tourney also
has Algeria, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Angola, Zimbabwe, Gabon, Congo
Brazzaville, hosts Rwanda and defending champions, Egypt all competing
for the two tickets allocated to the continent.

The nine-day tournament will be jointly staged at Amahoro Indoor stadium and Green Hills academy.

La Palisse
Nyandungu hotel will host six teams, five teams will stay in Lemigo
hotel, while the home team is already settled in at Belvedere village.

Before leaving for
the event yesterday for the tourney, the players alongside the team
handlers said they were ready to make the country proud in Rwanda and
also to secure one of the available ticket.

Emmanuel Odah and
Ogoh Daudu are in charge of the Nigerian team, which had twelve players
making the trip. The draws for the competition will take place later
today with the twelve countries on parade expected to be split into two
groups.

Earlier in the year, The Nigeria female U-19 team secured a ticket
to represent the continent at the World championships in Chile next
year after finishing second in the Afrobasket championship for the
females held in Cairo, Egypt.

The battle for top
honours at the ongoing Milo Secondary Schools Basketball Championship
will be a straight fight between the Kwara and Delta State
representatives, Sani Turi, coach of Kaduna’s Queen Amina College has
said.

Kwara’s Dalex Royal
College have been impressive so far in the championship and they won in
their first game against Adamawa’s Government Girls Secondary School
with ease.

The same goes for Delta’s Asaba Girls Grammar School who demolished Queen Amina College 44-12.

Judging from what
he has seen of the Kwara and Delta representatives, Turi believes both
sides are a class above other teams taking part in the championship,
although he said he will be satisfied to see his team finish in third
place.

“We will be
definitely be satisfied with the bronze medal because I don’t think
that the young players I brought for this championship can rub
shoulders with the Kwara and Delta teams,” said Turi.

“The two teams are
very strong sides and I think the title will be fiercely competed for
by these teams. For us, we will settle for the bronze medal which we
believe will inspire our young team to aim higher at the next edition
of the tournament.”

Adamawa coach not left out

Just like his
Kaduna counterpart, the Adamawa State coach, Dickson Tinism, also
believes the Kwara and Delta representatives are in a league of their
own. Nonetheless, Tinism looks forward to a tough semi-final clash
after qualifying for the tournament’s last-four after Zamfara’s
Government Girls Secondary School failed to turn up for their match on
Wednesday.

As a result, the
Adamawa team were given the maximum points, which guaranteed them a
place in the last-four – alongside group winners, Kwara’s Dalex Royal
College.

“It is painful that
we could not use the match against Zamfara to tune up for the semi
final clash but with what we had achieved this year, I think we have a
good chance even though we will be facing a tough side in the
semi-final stage,” said Tinism.

Commited sponsors

Nestle Nigeria PLC,
sponsors of the annual championship, reaffirmed its commitment to the
development of basketball. The company promised participants and
spectators an exciting time at the national finals.

Walter Okafor, the Category Business Manager (Beverages) of the
company, said that no expense has been spared to ensure a befitting
national final in the usual Nestle Milo tradition. He expressed delight
at the high standard of play demonstrated by the various teams so far
at the national finals saying that the youngsters have displayed great
skills, discipline, fair play and commitment to the game.