Bawa Fuseini: Postponement is no guarantee for Olympic slots
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Athletics Association (GAA), Bawa Fuseini, says the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic Games will not guarantee many athletes qualification for next year’s Games.
Bawa believed that it was difficult for athletes to have six months training to qualify for the Olympics it takes about two years for athletes to train and prepare adequately for Olympic Games qualification.
Advertisement
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee announced the postponement of this year's summer Olympic Games and Paralympic Games due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fuseini told Happy FM in an interview that if the GAA does not prepare well as the country always does not prepare well, it is going to be the same old story and that the extension would not make any serious impact.
“I don’t subscribe to the idea that the postponement of the Olympic Games will allow more athletes to qualify for the Olympic Games. We knew the Olympic Games would have taken place this year, but for the past four years what have the country done right to train more athletes to qualify.
“Six or eight months of opportunity of training athletes for qualification are not an easy task. These few months will not make any serious difference in the athletes. The only opportunity is the athletes who have trained enough and waiting for the opportunity to compete,” he explained.
“It will be very difficult for Olympic athletes to secure a qualification slot by just six or seven months of training. It takes about two years to train athletes adequately for Olympic qualification and, per the kind of training, qualification cannot be assured,” he revealed.
He further revealed that the postponement of the Olympics will have a negative impact on the athletes who had already qualified because they still have another year of intensive training in the era of the Coronavirus.
He called on the athletes who are fighting for Olympics qualification to use the extension as an opportunity to training intensively
