Nigeria’s 4x400m U-20 team at the recently concluded World Junior Championships in Eugene on Saturday was the centre of much ridicule when the runner on the 2nd leg, after receiving the baton with Nigeria leading in the final heat to reach the final, bizarrely stayed in his lane throughout his run!
Anyone who watches Athletics will know that only the first 500 metres is run in lanes in the 4×400 metres – it has a longer stagger than the individual 400 metres which unwinds after the athlete on the 2nd leg has run 100 metres, with everyone moving into lane one for the rest of the race! Here’s part of the race:
Simply incredible that the boy did not know how to run the 2nd leg – makes you wonder what they were trained to do in practice, doesn’t it? Didn’t they ever run this race back home in Nigeria with him on the 2nd leg? Simply shocking that such inexperience wasn’t caught and fixed before getting all the way to the WORLD STAGE! lol…
What made this mistake even sadder was that they ended up missing out on qualification for the final, after finishing third in the race in 3:09.37, and missing out on a fastest losers’ spot by just 0.15 seconds!
UPDATE: This is what we hear happened just before the race. At the very last minute the leg 1 and 2 runners were swapped and the following conversation ensued: “But coach, I have never run 2nd leg before”… “IT’S OKAY, JUST GO AND RUN!”
Humm, the coach should have resigned by now. If not the authority should be questioned on the criteria of appointing such a low learnered person as a coach on the world stage.
Yeah, not sure who the coaches present at the World Juniors in Oregon were. Seems like more focus was placed on the Commonwealth Games, with the two events within a day of each other.
Still it is shocking that such could have been allowed to happen! It’s like they never practised, and that boy has certainly never run the 2nd leg before!
Hopefully this coverage will force them to make sure that this never happens again in the future!
This is very unfair to Nigeria`s reputation.