Re: The Track and Field and the Rex Brobbey Approach.
After the fallout with Ernest Obeng, the NOC announced that it was going to concentrate more on local based athletes. The question here is, has it groomed any local? There are no serious programmes laid out, for that.
In comes Rex Brobbey, a national sprint star, who with great passion undertook a personal agendum to unearth sprinters, with his Ghana’s-Fastest project. Rex was determined to produce good sprinters for Ghana.
His selfless desire was to get a world top sprinter from Ghana. This should have been the work of our National Sports Council (NSC), but it has no serious programme laid down for that, and Rex filled that yawning gap.
What are our national coaches doing? Are they just waiting for a budding star to appear and claim them as their own?
I remember this coach at the national sports stadium, in the seventies, who would pick and choose any of the academical stars and start coaching them, by force. Some of the national stars claimed that the method of his coaching at national team level, was way below the standard of training they received in their schools. So, how did this coach get to be a national coach? Is this still going on?
In the case of Rex Brobbey, the question is what help even, by way of encouragement, did the nation’s athletics body give him? Rather, he was being attacked and his sponsors told things that were not encouraging. The man had turned out over thirty sprinters for this country, including those who are flying the national flag today.
All the NSC needs to do is to fully support Rex and invite him to join the Council and work in partnership for the good of athletics. But that was not to be. The NSC seems to dare anyone to touch the sport, and yet it is just sitting there doing nothing.
There is always this child-parent bond between athlete and school coach, which can be so strong that the athletes would sacrifice their all to make that coach, very, very proud. For he or she had identified them, picked them out in their raw state, polished them and set them on the road to stardom.
That bond could have made our athletes performed much better than they do if only Rex was recognised and invited to join the managers of the team. Baton changing is the highest risk factor in relays and with Rex Brobbey around,havingrun the relays at world events for the country, he could surely use that experience and impart the skills unto the sprinters. Today, maybe without Rex, we get disqualified at world events.
The decline in our track and field could be factored into the attention our sports authorities are giving to our athletes. If the reason is due to lack of funding, the authorities should have thanked God for Rex Brobbey who uses his own resources and goes out looking for funds to groom sprinters.
With a letter of recognition, Rex could have gone to the skies to get adequate funding from national and international sponsors and get the team into serious competitions to prepare them for the Olympics and World Championships.
This can also encourage our retired top athletes to go out there and look out for potential world beaters in their division. I can see the likes of Emelia Blavo, unearthing high jumpers, Agbashie hunting for throwers, George Osei bringing out long distance runners who could beat the East Africans, and many others coming out to help make Ghana sports great again.
Unfortunately, today we are not among Africa’s best. Countries like Botswana which was unknown only a decade ago, is now a leading and shining star in Africa. Zambia goes out there to win a medal. And where is Ghana? La Cote d’Ivoire has a world class sprinter in Marie-Josee Ta Lou who appears in every sprint final and in Ghana we have not produced any female to take over from Alice Anum.
As for Nigeria, we dare not go there. A nation, whose best used to be beaten by our second team, has now become our lords. And today, Liberia and Zimbabwe can feature in Olympic 200 meters men finals with Ghana completely out of the equation.
The decline of the sports in Ghana could be due to lack of management and other factors including cases of sexual harassment of our female athletes.
Following a publication in the Times newspaper edition of August 29, 2010, about allegations of some female athletes that some coaches sexually harass female athletes, a former chief athletics coach of the NSC, Dr Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah urged the government, through the sports ministry to institute a committee of enquiry into the allegation.
Sexually harassing female athletes under the care of coaches, had resulted in many talented victims shying away from the sports. I do not think any such committee was set up to investigate the allegations.
The other was the case of undue favouritism and made it clear that underperforming athletes in Team Ghana could be chosen over the best during the 1984 Olympic Games.
In 1977, at the Ghana Academicals’ final selection for the Ghana-Togo Games, officials picked a hurdler to replace the third fastest sprinter, call Monster, in the set of six sprinters. Togo was not competing in hurdles and so the Ghanaian hurdles team had to break camp. But this hurdler who is a favourite of the officials was promised a chance to travel to Togo.
A series of hundred-meter runs, a sort of endurance race, was organised to select the top four to join the best two sprinters to make the team. Monster who won in the first four races, with the hurdler always placing fifth, pulled a muscle in the fifth with a few meters to breast the tape and dropped down in pain.
He did not finish (DNF) and the hurdler who now came fourth was chosen over him. Yes, the third top sprinter who only pulled a muscle which could heal in a day or two, was dropped. How many good athletes were treated like this or any other way to deny Ghana the best?
When our footballers put up an attitude before their final group stage match against Portugal in the 2024 FIFA World Cup, by holding the nation to a ransom, demanding to be paid first, many Ghanaians condemned them
Only those who understand what goes on in sports administration in Ghana, will rather condemn the handlers and call the players, heroes. For how can the state budget almost $22 million for the Stars’ preparation and participation in the World Cup and yet, the players received nothing all the way to their final match in the group stage? The threat of the boycott was the only way to get what they truly deserved.
The 1977 Academicals camped in Achimota School in Accra, and they were to receive weekly allowances. At the end of the first week in camp, the officials sat at a table to give the Academicals their allowance.
Before one would be able to receive his or hers, they would first have to answer ridiculous questions, like what was served for supper on the first night, what attirethe head coach wore and more.
Failure to come out with the right answer would mean that athlete did not report on the first day and would be denied that day’s allowance. What happened to the deducted allowances can be any one’s guess.
The sports men and women can be used to create source of revenue for officials. The story was told of a situation where a coach on the team, had to step in to compete in the pole vault. At the end of the games, he was classified an athlete and paid what athletes got.
For the sake of money, Ghanaian officials could delist their own. Will this official ever participate for Ghana, even if he could win a gold medal?
In conclusion, the Martha Bissahissue comes in. This fine athlete won gold for Ghana at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China covering the distance of 800 meters in 2:04.90. She was seventeen, then. With that feat, Ghanaians were hoping for the first medal in Olympic track and field.
But unfortunately, like the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, we denied ourselves that opportunity. Martha had come out publicly to say that the authorities had demanded GH¢7,000.00 as bribe before offering her a scholarship. This is a serious allegation and she was asked to come out with the name of the official who approached her, or retract and apologise, failure to do so would attract suspension.
Martha could not meet the demands of the athletics body and so she was suspended indefinitely in July 2016, an Olympic year.
We are told that her conduct did not warrant suspension under Olympics laws. So, why was she suspended? Is it to show her how powerful the local athletics authority can be? Could there not be any way of finding out the truth? Could an official or anyone very close to Martha have told her this and she just could not mention names?
From 2014 to 2016, if only Martha had been put through tough trainings and races, she could have had a medal in all of the past three Olympics and World Championships. Martha is now twenty-seven and she run for her college and local athletics team in the USA.
Recording times above 2 seconds in the 800 meters, she cannot make it into the semi-finals of the Olympics or World Championship and with that Ghana can kiss any opportunity for a medal in track field in world events, good-bye.
Our sports, especially in the track and field is on the steepdecline.
Hon. Daniel Dugan
