Story By: Joseph Nii Ankrah
Former President of Ghana John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor believes the future is very bright as there are some potential world athletes who can win medals on the international scene in the near future.
The former President who was a also a former national athlete and won 100 meters gold medal for Ghana in the world stage, there are about numerous athletes that the nation can look up to for medals in the next Olympic Games in 2024.
He said his fopundation have exposed local athletes who can rob shoulders with the foreign based athletes.
Kufuor noted that the country abounds in a lot of talents in both track and field events and so this calls for massive investment in the sport to help nurture and attract the youth.
The former president also raised the need to organize refresher courses for coaches in the various disciplines to upgrade their skills, knowledge and expertise if athletics was to be developed to an appreciable standard. Kufuor further called for the motivation of Ghanaian athletes to help ginger them to strive for excellence at international competitions.
In the last few years, Ghana has failed to shine at the world stage as a generation of world-class athletes, including Aziz Zakari, Leo Myles-Mills, Andrew Owusu,Margaret Simpson, Ignisious Gaisah (who later switched nationality to run for the Netherlands) faded out. And in recent times, the GAA has turned its focus to unearthing talents at the grass roots to develop into world future beaters.
The Professor Francis Dodoo-led GAA has come under criticism for the declining fortunes of athletics and other shortcomings, including the manner in which it has handled the impasse with promising athlete Martha Bissah. Nonetheless, the association deserves some encouragement to continue with its talent-hunting exercises under its Youth Development Programme out of which not less than 37 promising youngsters from second-cycle institutions have earned scholarships to pursue higher education in UA colleges and universities where they benefit from better training methods, facilities and regular competitions.
That focus on school sports, including other private initiatives, such as the GNPC-sponsored Ghana’s Fastest Human competition, spearheaded by former Olympian, Reks Brobby, and endorsed by President Akufo-Addo when he launched last year’s competition, deserve all the support from the state and private entities because they involve a lot of hard work, raising the needed funding to organise but very critical to Ghana’s success in track and field events in future. Through these initiatives, many promising athletes since 2012, including national stars John Ampomah, Janet Amponsah, Elizabeth Dadzie, Emmanuel Dasor, Solomon Afful and Daniel Gyasi, have been unearthed and are being groomed for greatness both in Ghana and abroad.
The reconstruction of the Accra Sports Stadium for the 2008 African Cup of Nations robbed the facility of its athletics tracks and as a result greatly affected the development of the sport, as the fast-deteriorating tracks at the El Wak Stadium and the uncompleted University of Ghana athletics oval became the only places where competitions could take place in the capital. The net effect of the Accra Sports Stadium redesign was that the sport was slowly moved to the back-burner in the nation’s capital and thus affected the existing rivalries among schools in the Greater Accra Region which resulted in unearthing and development of talents in times past.
However, it is very gratifying that schools and colleges athletics remain big in the Ashanti Region where talented athletes, such as Haluties and others have emerged in recent years and remain a good conveyor belt for unearthing promising athletes as has been the case for many decades.
It is important that schools athletics is promoted by the Ghana Education Service (GES), in partnership with the athletics federation in other parts of the country, such as Tamale and Sekondi, where there exist stadiums with athletics tracks (or even with decent fields suitable for athletics) to serve as conveyor belts for unearthing talents to represent Ghana in future.