The article ?Athletics body?ll brook no interference?, a communiqu? from the GAAA, makes it so obvious that the GAAA is back to its old tactic of blaming others for its impotence. In fact, the Chairman of the GAAA goes as far to indicate that, had the GAAA been allowed to keep its original roster of athletes to the Commonwealth Games, Ghana would have fared better. Sorry Mr. Chairman, but the GAAA does not seem to get it. By your comments, you have proved to everyone who has been following events over the past 10 months that the GAAA still does not comprehend the reasons for its failures. Weren?t the athletes you wanted to take to the Commonwealth Games the same ones you insistently took to the African Championships? Well, apart from the Commonwealth Games team members who proceeded to the African Championships and won one gold and two silvers, didn?t the rest of the very large team you took to Tunisia only manage one bronze medal in the women?s 4x100m relay? And is it not true that even that bronze medal came from a team that finished last in the race and who got the medal because all the other teams in the relay except two got disqualified? If this was the performance of your preferred team at the African Championships, are you really serious in your thinking that Ghana would have fared better in the more competitive Commonwealth Games? Where is the logic there?
In the same manner, we understand that in Manchester you opined, among other things, that our long jumper could have potentially medaled if you had been allowed to take her to the Commonwealth, even though the bronze medal went for 6.49 meters; in Tunisia, however her best jump, even though she had the strongest wind of the day behind her (4.5 m/s) was only 5.68 meters, putting her in 10th place (but you thought she could medal at the Commonwealth Games). Is wasting Ghana?s money the mandate you have given yourself as Chairman? The long jumper in question is a fine athlete and her fellow athletes believe that she has potential. Nevertheless, she is not ready for that level competition. The money spent on tickets would have been better spent on giving better training assistance/environment to ensure that she can be more competitive the next time around? This is a classic example of how officials can damage the reputation of potentially great athletes by trying to push them through as a favor even though he or she is not ready. You sent her there when she was not ready and despite the fact that she gave her best, she failed badly. When she is ready, we the athletes will be the first to advocate for her addition to the team. In the mean time, she needs better coaching and supporting resources.
It is amazing that the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Ghana Olympic Committee, and the National Sports Council have all publicly acknowledged their respective contributions to the errors that have sunk Ghana athletics so low. In classic fashion, however, the GAAA is the only entity that has failed to admit its responsibility for the mountain of debacles (minus outside interference) and continues to blame everyone else. Rather, they continue to point the finger of blame at everyone but themselves, in the process faulting the bold last minute remedying of the situation that involved overriding the association?s inappropriate selection. Here is a chairman, who after a year or so, if not more, in office still hasn?t taken the time to write a letter of introduction to the athletes he was appointed to serve. Please spare us the excuse that you inherited the problems. All the other notable officials i.e. Minister of Youth and Sports, Chief Executive of the National Sports Council and the President of the Ghana Olympic Committee inherited organizations with multiple problems too. The question is ?what have you done since your appointment to bring our wayward ship back to port?
The honorable Minister of Youth and Sports just recently acknowledged the Ministry?s mistakes in the article ?Minister of Sports's eye opener? and we commend him for the courage it took to admit these and also for stating his intention to rectify the situation. Let us wait for the results. In turn, the Chairman of the Ghana Olympic Committee met with representatives of the Ghana Athletes Association in Manchester and admitted that ?(w)e have let you down by staying too long on the sidelines.? He promised that the GOC will from now on take a more proactive stand and went on to agree to some of the requests of the representatives of the Ghana Athletes Association on specific issues pertinent to the athletes. Mr. Baba. Kudos
Remembers folks, any leader will tell you that it is not an easy thing to admit that you have failed. Nevertheless, it is the mark of potentially great leaders to accept fault when the organization that they lead makes a blunder and even more challenging, to come up with solutions acceptable to the party that has been wronged.
Recently, there have been speculations that the Acting Chief Executive is biased towards the athletes. Let us put an end to this. If anybody believes that Dr. Owusu-Ansah is off the ?frying pan?, then that person is grossly mistaken. He will be the first person to tell you that he is under scrutiny from all areas including the Ghana Athletes Association. NONE OF US, FROM THE MINISTER OF YOUTH AND SPORTS TO THE ATHLETES AND TO ALL ATHLETICS LOVING PEOPLE FROM GHANA, CAN REST WHILST THIS CANCER RAGES ON. The Minster has acknowledged this and has promise the necessary reforms. This is our country and our sport, and until we solve our problems, none of us can afford to feel secure. We pray that in constituting reform-oriented coalitions to tackle the various problems of Ghana sports, he will not forget to include the athletes, who can best articulate the problems from their perspective.
Mr. GAAA Chairman, both you and Dr. Owusu-Ansah have been in your new positions for roughly the same length of time. Yet, you have not presented the athletes with your vision about how best to solve our problems. In fact, despite all the turmoil that athletics has gone through this year, the GAAA has not initiated any formal communication with the Athletes Association. Do you want to tell us that Dr. Owusu-Ansah and the NSC also prevented you from laying out your vision (i.e. goals and objectives) to the athletes? Listen up to some free advice, Mr. Chairman. You are best advised to look within and STOP trying to blame the GAAA?s failures on ?interference?. The so-called interference actually attenuated the damage that the shabby original selections that you oversaw would have done. In other words, the ?interference mitigated the wasting of national resources. In your recent interview, you stated that "(i)t is the job of the association to choose or select athletes to represent the country in international competitions.? Permit us to ask, Mr. Chairman, but do you have a criteria for selection? If so, do you think you should share these with athletes so that they know what standard they have to attain in order to be selected? Is that too much to ask for? Should it or should it not be the best athletes the nation has that go to represent the country? It is amazing that, today, you claim that the impotency of the GAAA has been due to interference from ?above?. We disagree with you. Converse to your thinking, the ?interference? is a direct result of GAAA's impotence. You should have learned from the Commonwealth experience and presented a more streamlined team for the Africa Championships. Fielding the sort of team you wanted us to, only gets the whole country criticizing Ghanaian athletics. We need national support and to get this it would be useful for us to ALWAYS present the best team we have.
Now, let us explain to you why what you call ?interference?, that was a direct result of the work of the Ghana Athletes Association, actually worked to the benefit of the country:
Scene 1
Is the Chief athletics coach not a member of the GAAA? If he is, then by extension, was this announcement below not made by the GAAA?
October 13th 2001, on Joy Online website. Article heading: “
So, please tell us, Mr. GAAA Chairman, where has the association been? Before anybody gets happy and points to this quotation as proof that the GAAA had good plans for the coming year prior to the “interference”, read below see why this was simply a smokescreen to fool the public.
Scene 2
January 23rd 2002,
Mr. Chairman, you chair an association that endorsed the selection of athletes in January, one week into a thirty-three plus week athletic season and more damming, twenty-six weeks before the Commonwealth Games. You claim to support local athletes but did you consider how they must have felt on the realization that a team had been penciled in even before the season was under way? Did Dr Owusu-Ansah force the association to make this hasty selection too? I will also prove to you, later, why the latter announcement actually partly vindicates Dr Owusu-Ansah’s later insistence on sending only five athletes to
In the same article from which the immediately prior quote was taken, the GAAA via Coach Atuahene, also announced that; “he was networking with officials of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and athletic associations in
It is true that any “Tom, Dick and Harry” can put information – whether right or wrong – on the internet. But it is also true that there are websites that are actually certified, from which any “Tom, Dick and Harry” knows that information found there are verifiable. Mr. Chairman, are you telling us that the GAAA cannot trust its parent organization, the IAAF to provide accurate information on performance?
Scene 3
The website “www.tilastopaja.com” is another reputable source of valid information. We have on more than on one occasion given this address to the GAAA (SS Athuahene and others) and on numerous occasions made mention of it in articles. Again, these are the reasons. This website, is actually better than the IAAF’s website – in terms of current performances – due to the fact that results from almost all competitions around the world – if listed on their calendar – are published on the site a day after the competition. It gets better. This site can provide you with information (performance results) that very few athletic associations around the world, including the GAAA, can give you on their own athletes. Believe us Mr. Chairman; it has more records on Ghanaian athletes than the GAAA has in its archives. Simple, type in the name of an athlete, hit “enter” and presto, it will give that athlete’s performance records for the past five years, and his or her performances in the current year. It even states his or her personal best, as well as their season’s best. Therefore, what Aziz Zakari has run today, should in the database by tomorrow. Any person can access his records to see his progression or regression over the course of any season. Thus, in the absence of national trials to select teams, how do you, Mr. Chairman, think you should select athletes to represent
You also stated that “(i)t is time we swallowed our pride and negotiate with our neighboring countries to use their facilities to organize a national justifier to which will enable us to select the best among the lot before going for international games.” Sorry Mr. Chairman, but have you considered the logistical and financial nightmare that such an undertaking will require. This is such an amateurish suggestion! As an aside, the fact that you still retain the word “amateur” in the name of the GAAA is evidence of how far behind times the association is. Even the GAAA’s parent organization has changed name from International AMATEUR Athletic Federation to International ASSOCIATION of Athletic Federations in recognition of the fact that the sport that the GAAA governs is no longer an “amateur” one. As you heed this call to change your name, please understand that you can not simply drop the word “Amateur” (and one of the As in GAAA) because the Ghana Athletes Association has already claimed the acronym GAA (with two As). Returning to the preposterous idea that we hold our national championships in neighboring countries, you fail to appreciate that when events are held in one’s own country many significant miscellaneous costs borne by supportive entities remain obscured from cost/benefit calculations. In that regard, which Ghanaian companies would we approach to sponsor the championships when next year’s championships are held in
In addition, you made a very good point about the need to improve facilities in
Yet, before we start touting new facilities as the solution to our problems, let us remind you that the current system is rotten and as acknowledged by the Minister of Youth and Sports, things will have to change. We must not fool ourselves into thinking that the acquisition of new facilities will turn our local athletes into world champions. Again, with our current disorganized system, it is no different from saying that if you gave a brand new car e.g. a Ferrari to an average driver, he or she will become a Formula One race car driver. Even with new facilities,
That is, our potentially new “car” i.e. facilities will get us nowhere without competent and knowledgeable drivers. All the “leeches” must be first be removed and replaced with competent, knowledgeable and intuitive individuals who are up-to-date on their understanding of the sport and who are forward-thinking in their perspective and approach. Without that, no amount of money thrown our way or new facilities built in
Nobody, Mr. Chairman, is blaming the association alone for all our problems. However, the association has not been willing to admit to its numerous faults. How can the same association, that was cited back in January, “A source close to GAAA hinted the GNA that officials are not keen on sending a very large contingent to the Commonwealth games and has thus settled on Anim, Aziz and Margaret” now claim that Dr Owusu-Ansah tied their hands? Your association proposed to send three athletes even before the season started. The figure was changed to ten after public outrage. Dr Owusu-Ansah ended up insisting on five athletes. Is that not two more athletes than the GAAA had earlier intended to take?
I hope Ghanaians understand that we sent in the best team that we had to
That is sad. But the truth is that had we sent 20 athletes to
You seem to suggest that the local athletes are at a disadvantage and were victimized by
Rather than run up the national bill by taking all the athletes that you think, without substantive rationale, are deserving of travel, will the country not be better served by spending the same thousands of dollars that are typically wasted on travel tickets on setting up programs and systems back at home that will help make the same athletes you are keen on helping more competitive the next time around?
Some have advocated that the travel experience is vital for the growth of home based athletes. If that is so, then we should also let deputy ministers, deputy Chairmen, assistant/junior coaches etc. accompany national teams (in lieu of Chairmen, Ministers, etc.) for major championships since the experience will be valuable for their future growth. That assertion is a fallacy. This is not a jamboree, Mr. Chairman. It is a competition of the best athletes in the Commonwealth, in
Finally, you state that “the nation could face sanctions from the AAC and IAAF the two main bodies that control athletics in
POSTSCRIPT: A number of articles have come out from various news outlets criticizing