Aware of the quality
of Nigerian athletes, Ghana’s Augustus Agbozo believes competing at the
forthcoming Nigeria Taekwondo Open would afford them the opportunity to size up
African stars ahead of the 2019 African Games.
The Ghanaian star
described Nigeria Open as another platform for African athletes to garner
points for their qualification to Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
“There is no doubt
that Nigeria Open promises to be exciting because Nigeria is a force when it
comes to taekwondo having produced one of Africa’s Olympic medalists – Chika
Chukwumerije and for us coming of the championship is not an option,” Agbozo
said.
He added: “If you are
an athlete you must be ready to take a risk to compete outside your country in
order to succeed. You must also have at the back of your mind that even if you
don’t win, you make it a challenge for you to stand firm and keep training hard
until you succeed.
So Nigeria Open is another risk and challenge, which we are
ready to face and compete fairly against some of the best.”
He however lamented
that most of their athletes could not make the trip to Abuja due to academics
commitment. “Getting the athletes to train is a major challenge because they
are in school, and most of our athletes are students. So when school resumes,
they do not have that luxury time to train all the time. This is even why I
could not register much more competitors for the Nigeria Open. I registered
only four competitors. The rest could not come because of school.”
He expressed optimism
that his lads would excel at the Nigeria Open. “Well our preparation for this
competition is very good to a large extent. In fact, I think we have very
strong preparations, and this is why I have a lot of confidence in the team.
We
had competed in previous competition in Nigeria where we picked three bronze
medals. We are going to improve on this at the Nigeria Open, which has World
Taekwondo ranking, and we are going to come back home with at least a gold
medal.”
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