By Ben Efe
With only five months to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, only a few Nigerian athletes have met the standards set by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria.

AFN president, Solomon Ogba disclosed in Lagos that rather than lower the marks, the bar has been raised for the athletes to strive and attain podium performance in Rio 2016.

“There is no way we are going to lower the standards for our athletes. Rather we even want them to surpass the IAAF world standards.

“This is the only way we can be up there with the other nations. This  is why we have encouraged athletes to be in camp at the High Performance Centre in Port Harcourt. There we have sports scientists in different stages of practice. We have the biometrics and energy distribution professors.

“The era of coaches just developing programmes to train the athletes is over, now it is more scientific. We have a programme signed by Prof Ken Anugwueje, which will be the standard.”

He argued that junior athletes who trained in HPC proved his point, when they beat their senior counterparts at the assessment meet held in Port Harcourt last week.

Nigeria did not win a medal at the Olympics in 2012 and it was in this regard, the AFN set a mark of 10.09 seconds for men 100m and 11.10 seconds for the women. In the 200m it is 20.20 seconds for men and 22.50 for women. In 400m the entry standard is 45.20secs and 50.90secs respectively. for women.

The AFN also promised a 50, 000 dollars bonus for any Nigerian athlete who wins gold in Rio 2016.