Retired national, int’l athletes form club to revive athletics

Enugu – Some retired national and international athletes in the South East have founded a club to assist in reviving athletics in the region.

“The club will also be a pressure group to persuade governments of the region to resuscitate athletics in the zone,’’ Coordinator of the project, Ikem Okolue, said on Monday in Enugu.

Okolue also said that the club was founded to create a forum for regular interaction by those of them who were like-minded and those who had competed in athletics in the past to meet in an atmosphere of friendship.

“It is also to re-unite and re-awaken in the youth of the region, the gains of engaging in athletics. We intend to use our past benefits and experiences to help the youths of today in taking to track and field.”

He said they needed to communicate with governments in the zone to re-create the framework for sports development and resuscitate athletics in the primary and secondary schools.

“We wish to organise regular track and field events and annual cross country events in Enugu.’’

Okolue said they were out to change the “ noticeable decline in the performing standards of athletes from the zone at the national and international scenes”.

He said that he had already taken action to rally other past performers at home and in the diaspora with many of them enthusiastic to support the club.

He said that they had held a series of meetings during which they resolved to contact many more of their colleagues.

Okolue, a specialist in 400 metres, retired from sports in 1980 after representing the country in the then annual Nigeria/Ghana sports competion in 1975.

He was also a member of the Nigerian contingent to the botched Montreal Olympic Games in 1976, boycotted by many countries because of Canada’s sporting links with the then apartheid South Africa.

Okolue, now a Lagos-based communications expert, later captained the University of Minnesota team in 1980. (NAN)