Ganev waits on sports ministry

Sports authorities in Nigeria must live up to their responsibilities if the country hopes to augment her slots for weightlifting at next August's Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

This succinctly explains the position of Ivan Ganev,Coach to the Weightlifting Federation of
Nigeria (WFN) in a chat with nigeriasports.com on the forthcoming winners-take-all qualifiers in Tunisia.

Nigeria already has two slots in the Olympics, courtesy of Franca Ogbodo and Joke Adekola who
qualified by virtue of their gold medal-winning efforts at the 2003 All Africa Games in Abuja.

Earlier attempts at securing more slots proved abortive as the nation's representatives fell short of
the required points at the qualifiers in Canada.

Ganev, however has the onerous task of raising a formidable team of lifters for the last opportunity at
gaining more slots afforded by the qualifiers which come up May 1 in Tunis.

Frank talk
"Obviously this is the only chance left for us to take more lifters to Athens,” said the Bulgarian.” But
nothing seems to be moving,the lifters are not in camp.I cannot do that because the sports ministry has
not given us the go ahead, yet time is not anybody's friend."

He revealed that the team for Tunisia will be made up of male lifters only, with qualifiers for women
already concluded, while appealing to the sports ministry to quickly facilitate camping of lifters
ahead of the Tunisia event.

"The team to Tunis will comprise of eight men, though we can only secure a maximum of two slots and at least one,"he explained.

One step there
Nigeria had traditionally secured bulk of her tickets to weightlifting event of the Olympic Games
from the All Africa Games. But stiff resistance from rival opponents such as Egypt, ensured that Nigeria
booked just two slots from the games in Abuja.

Report by Dipo Okubanjo