Martha must keep running for Ghana
Ghana’s golden athlete, Martha Bissah, must be living her dream of furthering her education while at the same time being active in her chosen field of middle distance running.
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The breakthrough came recently, and, thankfully, just last Sunday the junior Olympic champion at 800 metres left the country for the United States to begin a four-year scholarship stint at the Norfolk University in Ohio.
This, by far, must be a happy development in the life of the 19-year-old Martha, who had herself been quick in singing the praises of the former Chairman of the Ghana Athletics Association (GAA), George Lutterodt, and others in bringing the dream to fruition.
We would like to join in hailing all those who helped in getting Martha the scholarship, as that is the surest way of ensuring her sporting and educational development, in the hope that Ghana becomes the gainer eventually.
Indeed, many of our past athletes had had the privilege of traversing a similar path and we expect that their good examples should be the shining light for the young Martha.
Without doubt, Martha’s potential in rising to become one of the biggest athletes in the world in the forseeable future is enormous, after beating all juniors in the 800-metre race at the 2014 Nanjing Olympics in China.
It is against this backdrop that we ask the young athlete not to be overawed by certain worrying comments by some of our athletics officials for her to think it is not worth dying for Ghana.
Indeed, it is worth dying for one’s country, which is why President John Dramani Mahama put the stamp of acknowledgement on her golden achievement in Nanjing with a GHc10,000 reward, among other forms of recognition.
She should not make the mistake to turn her back on Ghana by considering switching nationality to run for an adopted country, as that will be a terrible miscalculation.
Once in the US, temptations abound for Martha to jettison Ghana for another country because of the real or perceived notion that she had not been treated well by Ghana’s athletics officials for various reasons, including her resilience not to surrender the President’s gift to certain suspected officials.
We say farewell to Martha and stress that she should keep running for her country of birth whenever competition calls.
