Nigeria’s 8th Relay Medal was won thanks to a brilliant run in the men’s 4×100 metres at the Athens Olympics, by the quartet of Olusoji Fasuba, Uchenna Emedolu, Aaron Egbele and Deji Aliu. This was an exciting race in which Nigeria was in contention until the very end. Interestingly, Maurice Greene, who ran the anchor leg for Team USA, was Team Nigeria’s relay coordinator for the World Relays last year and the Commonwealth Games in July/August 2014.
This race more or less marks the zenith of men’s elite sprinting in Nigeria. Fasuba, Emedolu and Aliu were all sub-10 second 100 metres sprinters, and sadly Nigeria has not produced a sprinter that has dipped under 10 seconds since these guys hung up their spikes! Fasuba, despite later setting the current 100 metre African Record of 9.85 seconds in 2006, retired relatively early (at the age of 27) to join the British Navy. Emedolu is now based in Enugu and has been training athletes there for a number of years now, while Deji Aliu recently started his own Track Club in Lagos, and spoke exclusively to Making of Champions about his experience so far with coaching his athletes! Worthy of special mention is the fact that both Emedolu and Aliu are currently serving as Top Sprinter coaches, having partnered with Making of Champions in their quest to raise the next generation of sprinters who will take the world by storm in the near future.In fact, Coach Aliu led Team MoC on its FIRST outing at the Lagos Relays recently, where the teams won a commendable SIX medals – 1 GOLD, 3 Silver and 2 Bronze medals!
The sub-plot to this story that few, if anybody has ever connected, is that a Nigerian who was not in this Bronze Medal winning quartet won the 100m Individual Silver Medal at the same Olympics, but did so competing for Portugal! His name is Francis Obikwelu. Given that Obikwelu defeated even Maurice Greene in the individual event at Athens ’04, IF he had still been competing for Nigeria by then, this 4x100m Bronze may very well have been a GOLD medal for Nigeria. Of course we shall never know, but it shows that even then Nigeria had the talent needed to become Olympic Champions in the 4x100m Relay! So why exactly did Obikwelu turn his back on Nigeria? Well, the question could also be framed as “why did Nigeria turn its back on him?” Obikwelu’s story features in the documentary Making of Champions: “The History”. We went all the way to Portugal to meet him, and brought him down to Nigeria as well!
It might also interest you to know that Obikwelu, along with Nigeria’s last individual track medallist at the Olympics, Glory Alozie, join the duo of Aliu and Emedolu to form MoC’s star-studded quartet of coaches, and were part of the Top Sprinter auditions in Ibadan and Enugu!
The World Relays is a new annual competition (the 2nd edition being held in The Bahamas on May 2nd/3rd), where the world’s best Track & Field nations will compete over 10 different events – 4x100m, 4x200m, 4x400m, 4x800m & 4x1500m (both men and women). There is a total prize fund of $1.4 million up for grabs, and the Top 8 teams in both the 4x100m and 4x400m events automatically qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. For viewers in Nigeria and Africa, the World Relays will show LIVE on SuperSports on May 2nd from 10.50pm – 3.00am on SS7N/SSL, and 11:50pm – 03:10am on SS6A/SSL on May 3rd (Nigerian Time).
