The President of Nigerian ArmWrestling Federation, Engineer Samuel Jackson is still counting the blessings of the body’s National Open Championship, which took place on Saturday at Lekan Salami Stadium, Ibadan.
While describing it as first of its kind and an exciting attraction from beginning to end, Engineer Jackson also revealed the discovery of a new female talent named Funke Afoworo, who defeated one of the highly rated African champions present at the contest.
Jackson said in an exclusive interview with Sports247: “The way to describe it is that it was awesome, massive, and electrifying. We’ve never seen that type of atmosphere in the National Open before now … having more than 120 athletes present to compete.
“Everybody was excited, the whole seats were occupied, and everyone was shouting for joy. It was like we were in the world championship. We’ve not seen something like this in a long, long while.”
The arm wrestling supremo also revealed that the competition was used to celebrate Women’s Day, then cast a look into the future and spoke about the huge potentials lying ahead of the sport.
Jackson enthused, “I hope we come back to Oyo State and see something like this again. In fact, everyone who was not there on Saturday would not understand what it means to celebrate sports, and we also used it to mark Women’s Day. We celebrated especially our women in sports, and it was awesome. It was good and one of the best we’ve had in arm wrestling this year.”
Jackson concluded with specific mention of the biggest gains achieved on the day, saying: “We discovered the best and the newest athletes in the block. There’s one beautiful girl from Oyo, Funke Afoworo. She beat the African champion, and that makes her the new girl on the block.
“Watch out for her come July. By God’s grace, we are going to monitor her, we’ll support her, and we’re going to train her to be the best in Africa come July.”
