Team Nigeria ended its campaign at the XXXIII Olympic Games on Saturday with no medal for its efforts, which began in Bordeaux a day before the event’s opening ceremony.
Before ending its participation a day before the closing ceremony, its athletes had participated in 12 sports.
These were in athletics (35), badminton (1), basketball (13), boxing (2), canoeing (2), cycling (1), football (22), swimming (2), table tennis (4), taekwondo (1), weightlifting (2) and wrestling (6).
Following its first outing through the Super Falcons in Bordeaux in women’s football on July 25, Team Nigeria has, however, gone from one misadventure or another in virtually all the events.
Except in women’s basketball, where it participated through D’Tigress and reached the quarter-finals, a feat no African team has ever achieved. Team Nigeria was almost not at the Games.
It was a case of near-misses in several events, with the athletes and teams raising hopes but eventually dashing them and causing several Nigerians to lose interest in the Games.
A couple of wins were recorded in athletics, wrestling, and basketball, but they were not good enough to take Team Nigeria near the podium.
This was why the few Nigerian journalists at the women’s weightlifting 71-kilogramme event on Friday, where Joy Eze performed, were even caught dozing off.
They were waiting for the event to just end.
And it was worse with wrestler Hannah Reuben, who, while competing in women’s freestyle 76kg on Saturday, had the problem of not seeing her compatriots in the stands.
She lost 2-5 in a round one bout at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris to Davaanasan Enkh Amah of Mongolia, though.
That was how bad it was for Team Nigeria.
Speaking on the team’s performance while addressing journalists on Friday, sport minister John Enoh acknowledged it was disappointing.
”It was indeed a performance not worthy of our name and the efforts put in,” he said.
Mr Enoh noted that Team Nigeria’s performance not only disappointed Nigerians but also did no justice to the commitment of President Bola Tinubu’s administration to sports development.
The minister said, ”Our performance here (in Paris) belied our efforts both as a government and as administrators, and it did not also justify the efforts our athletes put in.”
He, however, promised a change, assuring that serious efforts would be put into restructuring the entire sports landscape in terms of personnel and institutions.
”We just have to make changes, no matter whose ox is going to be gored. We must put in place reforms so as not to have a repeat of what we have just witnessed,” the minister said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Reuben’s outing on Saturday was Team Nigeria’s final outing at the Games.
But this is aside from Sunday’s appearance in the march-past event of the closing ceremony, which is not compulsory in any way.