Judo chief backs Nartey

Emmanuel Tetteh, president of the Ghana Judo Association (GJA), has backed Judoka Emmanuel Nartey, saying the athlete did nothing wrong to deserve an expulsion from the camp of Ghana at the Commonwealth Games.

The Ghana Olympic Committee( GOC) expelled Nartey - a British Army Officer who competed for Ghana, at the Games from the camp, for acts of indiscipline early this week.

However, a letter signed by Tetteh and sent to the judo team manager in the British Army,  said: “I want to state that Nartey, did not do anything wrong to warrant what is being planned to destroy his reputation and character.

“It's unfortunate that the handlers are taking freedom of communication as a disrespect and are trying to use what happened between them and Nartey, to cover up for the poor performance of the Ghanaian team at the Commonwealth games.”
The letter chanced upon by the GNA Sports stated: “It's unfortunate that a request for a refund of travel expenses, which was agreed upon prior to the commencement of the Games should degenerate to this far.

“It was agreed that, prior to the movement of the Ghanaian team from Ghana to Ayrshire for the pre-games camping, all foreign-based Ghanaian athletes should fund their way to the camp and all their bills, will be refunded on arrival, but Nartey and some of the athletes informed the GOC, that due to their training programmes they will not be available for the camping but will join the team in Glasgow and it was agreed by all”.

It added that upon reaching the Games Village on July 22, 2014, “i realised that there were a lot of challenges facing the handlers of the Ghana team and my judokas, so I put in the structure of command where all communications should be channelled through me but unfortunately this was breached when it came to payment of allowances to athletes.

“It came to my notice that the money which was brought in for the payment of the allowances was not enough so part was being paid and the rest to be paid later but this was not well communicated to all the athletes, so when it got to Nartey’s turn, he requested for the refund of his transport, which did not go well with those making the payment, hence the misunderstanding.”