Like the name she answers, Nigerian Blessing Okagbare has entered into the Nigeria Guinness book of record with the two medals she won in the just concluded IAAF world championship.
The Sapele born sprinter untill now is the only Nigerian that has won 2 medals in the world athletic events. Blessing won 1 silver medal in long jump and bronze in the 200 metres events respectively, making her the only Nigerian that has achieved this feat.
Nigerians both home and abroad have earlier placed their hope on the patriotic Blessing, and she has never let them down.
Blessing Okagbare went in for four energy sapping events and made up with two events in silver and bronze medals, it was not a bad result on the whole on her part. Hence she should be applauded and encouraged to do more in future competitions.
While advising the Federal Government to encourage talents like Blessing Okagbare the efforts to spot more talents should be intensified in the land.
Nigeria is a blessed country with abundance of sporting talents in almost every event. Nigeria will do well to capture her abundant undiscovered talents across the country, if she will avoid shame and disgrace in an international meeting.
To do this, the powers that be in sports should without delay start hunting for talents in the various states from in the grassroots in every sports, even alongside soccer, the king of sports.
The experience of Blessing Okagbare should be a better lesson for us all. The time to plan is now.
If all sporting events have required talent, Blessing would have gone for the gold medal either in the 100metres or the 200 metres. Her energy was sapped earlier from the long jump and 100metres before the 200metres hence her best was thwarted to secure the maximum expectation of Nigerians.
Doing things right will make our athletes last at all world events if Nigeria could create the enabling environment to all Nigerian athletes to excel, and create world record as Nigeria did at the Olympic in the football event with a bunch of talented patriotic Nigeria led by legendary Kanu Nwankwo and Chioma Ajunwa in 1996.
The likes of Blessing will forever be happy to burn their energy in service to their father land in humble service if the right opportunity and environment is created for them. ####
