Daily Independent Online.
*
Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
Team
Nigeria’s
woes mount as Onyali flops
Pius Anakali
Snr.
Correspondent,
Lagos
Nigeria’s
queen of the track, Mary Onyali-Omagbemi’s attempt to surpass her
performance of the bronze medal she won at Atlanta 1996 Olympic came crashing
down Monday when she failed to
qualify for the second round of 200-metres athletics for women.
With the loss,
Onyali-Omagbemi whose inclusion in Team Nigerian to the Athens games generated
a lot of controversy has further dampened the hope of a medal at the ongoing
Olympics.
Ranked 37-in her
category, Onyali-Omagbemi returned a time of 23:23 to place sixth and crashed
out in what seems to be her last appearance at the world stage.
Her controversial
inclusion in the team and her
failure in the 200-metres has
further raised the question over her inclusion in the team.
Uchenna Emedolu and
Onyali were initially dropped from the Team Nigeria because of their inability
to compete in the Mobil Olympic trials in Abuja.
Athletics
Federation of Nigeria (AFN), the body under whose auspices the tournament is
organized had to exclude her name from the list of athletes sent to the Nigeria
Olympic Committee (NOC) as those qualified to represent Nigeria in Athens.
Physicians were
said to have confirmed Mary and Uchenna unfit for the athletics trials, even as
they were sure of recovering on time before the Games proper but AFN boss Dan
Ngerem, ruled out the possibility of wild card entries for both top athletes.
Even though she
failed when the expectation on her was high, Mary Onyali-Omagbemi has truly
made a name for herself in the track and field, establishing herself as
Nigeria’s all time best.
