NAN-S-4
Sports
Lagos, Nov. 21, 2016 (NAN) Emmanuel Oghenejobo, a taekwondo silver medallist at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, on Monday urged the nation’s athletes to downplay monetary demand in their service to the country.
Oghenejobo told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that athletes should be committed in their pursuit to represent the country creditably in major competitions before expecting reward.
He noted that the economic situation in the country had made many athletes to demand for monetary reward before competing in competitions unlike in the past when athletes competed for glory.
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“Economic reasons is what is killing sports today, there is hunger some administrator becomes bad they want to embezzle as much as they can, even some athletes themselves, if you tell them to come and do the sport, they tell you what is in it for me.
“In our time, imagine you win a national championship and they put glucose in your hand, you lick the glucose and you feel excited, it’s not the money, we want to bring taekwondo back to that feeling, the way we use to live.
“Taekwondo is character, my coach use to say to me then, just train by the time you win and become somebody money will follow you and that was the principle we adopted and that’s how we live over the years’’.
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KOA/ENN
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(Edited by Edwin Nwachukwu)