By Patrick Omorodion
Team Nigeria did wonderfully well at the recently concluded 17th Commonwealth Games in Dehli, India, winning a record 35 medals (11 gold, 10 silver, 14 bronze), 11 more than the earlier record set at the 1994 Games in Victoria, Canada.

At the 1994 event, Daniel Igali, an African champion at the time couldn’t win a medal but the Canadians saw in him the potential for a world championship and an Olympic medal and wooed him to stay back and become their citizen.

He was groomed in six years to become an Olympic champion at the  2000 Games in Sydney, Canada’s first wrestling gold. He also won world championship and Commonwealth Games medals within a span of 10m years.

After he retired from the sport, Igali who is striving hard to ensure that his home state, Bayelsa, becomes the Mecca of wrestling in Nigeria in terms of human resource and physical infrastructure, offered himself as technical adviser to the country’s wrestling team.

Director General of the National Sports Commission, NSC, Chief Patrick Ekeji, who knows the worth of Igali, did not hesitate to appoint him.

He started work by drawing a training regime for the wrestlers which he strictly followed and would not allow any official bottleneck or bureaucracy  disturb his programme irrespective of who is concerned.

“At times some officials will come and tell me that they want the wrestlers to attend one official function or the other when they are supposed to be training but I stood my ground, telling them my training comes first. Some of the officials didn’t like it but the D-G (Chief Ekeji) understood.”

This stance paid off as the wrestlers went for the Commonwealth Games and did the country proud, winning a total of 13 medals ( 3 gold, 3 silver, 7 bronze) for the country. It could have been better than this if the camping was supported with participating at major championship across the globe, Igali said.

He has therefore told the NSC in clear terms that for a better outing at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, preparation must not only start early but funds should be made available for the wrestlers to attend at least five championships around the world.

“My wrestlers were not as prepared as their Canadian counterparts. The Canadian female wrestling team had one million dollars ( about N150 million) to prepare for the Games. You can imagine that, our wrestlers were just determined to excel because training without competition does not really help the athletes,” he said.

Apart from adequate training backed with good funding, another area Igali said the NSC should look into is welfare and remuneration for the athletes to serve as motivation for them like is being done in most countries.

He disclosed that Pakistan voted $150,000 for any gold medal won by their athletes and for the first time one of their athletes won a Commonwealth gold medal. This motivated their athletes to win two gold medals, all in wrestling.

“If such money is voted for Team Nigeria, I tell you our athletes will be motivated to win medals. You know the average life span for an athlete is 10 years and within this period everything should be done to motivate them to win. They should also be rewarded handsomely so that you have something to look forward to,” he advised.