Olympics: Nigeria Withdraws Men’s 4x400m

The Athletic Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has withdrawn Team Nigeria’s men’s 4x400m squad from this year’s Olympiad in London.

President of the AFN, Chief Solomon Ogba said Tuesday in a statement that the withdrawal followed the none qualification of Nigeria for the event.

“When we listed our team for the Games on Monday afternoon, we were hoping that our men’s 4x400m relay squad will be among the final 16 countries. But following the list released yesterday by the IAAF, we are therefore withdrawing the 4x400m from our original team to the London Games,” observed the statement from the AFN president.

At the briefing on Monday at Sports City, AFN listed Saul Weigopwa, Abiola Onakoya, Isah Saliu, Tobi Ogunmola, Segun Ogunkole and Godday James as members of the 4x400m team to the Games.

The relay quartet of Isah Saliu, Abiola Onakoya, Amaechi Morton and Saul Weigopwa ran the race of their lives on the final day of the African Championships in Port Novo to claim the men’s 4x400m gold. Nigerian captain, Weigopwa out ran Botswana’s last leg on the curve of the home stretch to hit the finish line in 3.02: 39 secs. Botswana got disqualified for South Africa (3.04.12secs) to profit while the bronze went to Kenya (3.04.21).

“We were hoping that the 3.02 was good enough to see Nigeria in the last 16 position. We knew that IAAF uses the aggregate margin of each countries two best times to correlate those to make the final cut of 16 team but it is quite unfortunate that we could not pull through,” stressed Chief Ogba who remains positive of Team Nigeria’s good outing at the London Games.

Culled from VANGUARD