IOC DISGRACE NIGERIA

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have described as baseless Nigeria’s protest and demands following the non-qualification of the men’s 4 x 400m and the women’s 4 x 100m teams for the relay events of next month’s 29th Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
Nigeria had fired a strongly worded protest to the IOC on the purported advice of the president of the International Association of Athetics Federation,laying the blame for the 4 x 400m and 4 x 400m relay teams inability to meet the cut-off point for the Games on the refusal of European countries to grant entry visas to the two teams for some of the relay qualifying meetings, especially the 24th Vardinoylannia meeting in Rethymo, Greece on July 14.
The Greek embassy denied the Damola Osayomi-led quartet visas because of the violation of its visa requirements.
In its reply, the IOC said Nigeria was asking for the impossible because all arrangements for the Games have been concluded in terms of accommodation, training venues and other logistics.
The IOC also reminded Nigeria that the IAAF set the qualification period over two years ago for countries to compete for the 16 places allotted to each relay events.
Complete Sports check on the IAAF website confirmed IOC’s argument. In rule 3-1 under rule 3 titled Qualification system, athletes must reach the qualification standards as set by the IAAF for each event from January 1, 2007 until 23 July 2008 for individual events and from January 1, 2007 until 16 July, 2008 for relay events in order to be eligible to participate in the athletic events of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Rule 3.4 on relay teams explained how the IAAF will arrive at the final 16 thus: There shall be a maximum of 16 qualified teams in each relay event, based on the aggregate of the two fastest times achieved by national teams at IAAF recognised international events in the qualification period of 1 January, 2007 to 16 July, 2008.The IOC, in rejecting Nigeria’s appeal wondered why the country did not take advantage of the long qualification period instead of trying to come in through the back door.
Sports at random investigations reveal that the Nigerian relay teams hardly participate in one-day meetings and thus denied themselves the opportunity of taking advantage of the athletes when reach peak form.
Between January last year and July 16 this year, the relay teams only competed in three major events viz the All Africa Games in Algiers last year and the World Championships in Athletics in Osaka also last year.
The teams also participated in the 16th African Athletics Championships hletics Federations (IAAF) Lamine Diack