The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has explained why veteran sprinter, Seye Ogunlewe, was left out of the Paris Olympics-bound team.
The AFN has already submitted its list of athletes ahead of today’s (July 8) deadline set by World Athletics for all federations to make their team available for the Paris Olympics. Ogunlewe did not make the squad.
The Guardian gathered that the decision to exclude Ogunlewe from the squad to Paris is not going down well with a particular member of his family.
However, the Secretary General of the AFN, Rita Mosindi, has explained that the federation followed all laid down rules and procedures in picking the athletes for the Paris Olympics.
“Competitions at the Olympic Games are held under the auspices of each International Federation,” Mosindi explained. “World Athletics stipulates two ways of qualifying for the Games. The first is by attaining the qualification standard of 10:00secs, while the second way is by securing a world ranking not higher than 56th.
“Favour Ashe and Godson Oghenebrume qualified by achieving 9.94secs and 9,99secs respectively, which places them as number 13th and 26th in the world rankings. Consequently, they qualify by both attaining the set standard and by world ranking.”
Mosindi continues; “World Athletics introduced rules for all the relays at the Paris Olympic Games. This rule insists that any athlete who qualifies by attaining the set standard gets the automatic placement to compete in both the individual 100m race and the 4×100m relay. Ashe and Oghenebrume having met the criteria, had taken two slots in the relay team. This left three slots to be filled by others. The relay team is made up of four athletes and one alternate.
“In order to fill the remaining slots, the first three athletes at the national trials in Benin City, Edo State were to be selected to join the other two automatic qualifiers.
“Ashe and Oghenebrume did not compete in the trials because they were medically examined and exempted by the medical team of the competition and ratified by Professor Ken Anugweje, Chairman of the Medical and Anti-Doping Commission of the AFN.
“At the finals of the 100m race in Benin, Kayinsola Ajayi, Akintola Alaba and Itshekiri Usheoritshe won, and automatically filled the remaining spots for the relay. Seye Ogunlewe placed fourth at the national trials and is number 68th in the world rankings. These were the basis of the technical committee’s selection,” she stated.
According to the AFN Secretary General, all the results of the national trials of countries in the world are conveyed to World Athletics.
“Any anomaly in the final list of athletes submitted to World Athletics is usually interrogated. The Athletics Integrity Unit abhors instances of discrimination, cheating, bias, bribery and victimisation by member federations. This is the essence of the safeguarding policy of World Athletics.
“We have outstanding issues with them and cannot afford to be called to question on safeguarding issues.”
Another official of the AFN revealed, yesterday, that an influential member of Ogunlewe family had written to the Sports Ministry just before the AFN released its list to the public seeking a way for the athlete to be ‘smuggled’ into the list.