The World Junior Athletics Championship kick-started last Monday and Nigeria is fully represented in the host city Calli, in Columbia. Nigeria’s under 20 Track and Field stars will file out against their counterparts of other parts of the world as they are expected again to do the nation proud and bring home medals.
The president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, Tonobok Okowa has said that the young Nigerian talents flying the flags of Nigeria in Columbia has no reason to fail right there in the World Junior Athletics Championship in Columbia.
The Delta State native stressed on the level of top class preparation done as a team that is prepared for glory, saying the team must come back with medals. “We should win gold medals. We have to come back home with medals. We should come home with some gold and some other medals.we must come home with medals. That’s what I have been telling them and we are standing on that. They’ve trained well, we put them in camp in Delta State, in Asaba, we’ve worked so hard. Even the ones in the U.S are already in Kenya. You can recollect that these are the athletes that did well in our Youth Games and we started grooming them. Some of them were send on scholarship by the Delta State Government.”
The last edition in 2021, Nigeria came 3rd overall best behind host Kenya and second place Finland. Team Nigeria managed to scoop four gold medals, no silver at all and three bronze medal to become second most performed african country.
