A board member of Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF), Adewale Adeniyi has revealed details of a frenetic hunt for new talents embarked upon by the grapplers’ sport’s governing body, Sports247 reports.
Adeniyi, who is also the director-general of Nigeria Customs Services (NCS), pointed out that the wrestling federation has always been proactive about hunting around for new talents, but they have now resorted to doubling their efforts.
This comes amidst the reported retirement of two of Nigeria’s most accomplished wrestlers, Blessing Oborodudu and Odunayo Adekuroye, thereby leaving fans of the event wondering where Nigeria’s next medal hopes will come from.
Although Adeniyi did not specifically mention the said retirement of the top duo or any other wrestler that has won laurels for the country, he admitted that everyone in the wrestling federation is working round the clock to cement a bright future for the country.
Adeniyi disclosed, “This is a concern that we also share in the board, and the president has also been very concerned about it. The president of the board and our champion, Daniel Igali, is looking into it.
In our meetings and engagements over the last two years, that is one of the things we have been putting our attention on. This is the only federation that, immediately after the Commonwealth Games, we quickly met, and we started to put our plans together so that we will do better than we did in the last three, four years.”
Adeniyi went ahead to disclose specific steps and efforts being undertaken by the wrestling body to ensure that any vacuum created by the exit of a current star is quickly filled up.
“One of the things we are doing is to work within. This means we basically look beyond these current champions and see what talents we can develop from younger ages at the youth level and at the grassroots.
We have been very visible at the National Youth Games. Wrestling has featured regularly in those tournaments, and we have picked a couple of young wrestlers who we are going to nurture,” Adeniyi assured.
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