By Richard Animam
Come Friday 3rd to Sunday   5th July 2009, Anthony Village will witness a beehive of activities as Christus Sports International and Lagos State government kick-start a three-day community sports event tagged Top Town Challenge.
The Top Town Challenge is an idea muted by Christus Sports International with the objective of opening access to all, rejuvenating sports and discovering talents from the community level.

Lagos State in conjuction with Christus Sports International is organising a three-day Top Town Challange, a community driven sports competition scheduled to hold at the Anthony village Sports Ground from 2nd to 5th July 2009. Photo shows from left, Gbemisola Salako, Mr. Adeniyi Ladega, CEO, Christus Sports International and Mr. Adelaja Adesina, ED, Christus Sports International explaining some points during their visit to Vanguard Newspapers yesterday. Photo by Sylva Eleanya.

According to Adeniyi Ladega, CEO of CSI, sports in Nigeria over the years has suffered serious decline. Ladega, an old boy of Igbobi College, says the idea was borne out of the need to reposition sports at the community level which could transcend all levels in the country.

He stressed that the Top Town Challenge will, in the first phase, witness an intra-community competition – where residents of a particular community will compete among themselves and  representatives will emerge. After a while, the second phase of the event will begin with the inter-community challenge. Here, unlike the intra-community, representatives of communities will slug it out until finalists emerge.

The Anthony event flags off with fitness walk which comes up on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 with Lagos Governor Raji Fashola in attendance.

“The Anthony Village event starts at 4pm on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 with a road show and later in the day there will be a quiz show at 7pm. The essence of the quiz show is to get residents to know more about their community.

“On Saturday, the main event which will feature four sports-Soccer, Basketball, Table Tennis and Sprint and Relays, starts from  9:00 a.m.  The event will feature athletes from different age groups- U-10, and U-14. The old boys will also compete in the tennis event.

“On Sunday, there will an awards night, family tug-of-war, Most Outstanding Male hair style and Miss Top Town beauty pageant amongst others.  The venue is the Anthony Village sports ground.