Story by Michael Okuley, Paris.
Ranking Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Youth, Sports and Culture, Hon Kobena Mensah Woyome, has taken a swipe at Ghana’s performance in the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Ghana ended her involvement in the Games following the disqualification of the 4x100m men’s relay team at the semi-finals.
The quartet had finished 6th with a time of 38.62 only to be disqualified for crossing the line before the exchange of the 3rd baton. The decision meant the team led by Joseph Paul Amoah has ended their participation in the Games after other athletes were unable to progress to the various stages of their events.
The Member of Parliament for South Tongu Constituency in the Volta region, speaking to our olympiccorrespondent in Paris, Michael Okuley, described Ghana’s campaign as disastrous.
“I think it has not been the best as we were all expecting. If you have not consistently prepared the athletes well for proper understanding and cohesion for events, it becomes disastrous and unfortunately, that is what we saw during the relay where our boys were not able to change the baton effectively, leading to our disqualification. This tells that a whole country like Ghana does not know how to handle basic things like this.
We ought not to have changed our pattern with the athletes for the relay. Our participation in the Olympics has been abysmal, and the relay team’s performance was the icing on the cake. There were so many factors that led to this bad performance from Ghana.”
Ghana was represented by 8 athletes in 4 different events, including 100m and 50m freestyle, high jump, men’s 100m, and men’s 4x100m relay, for the 17-day event expected to end on Sunday, 11 August 2024.
