Planned action for Los Angeles 2028

Rose Yeboah would need the support of the state to improve her performance ahead of Los Angeles 2028

Three weeks of impressive, outstanding and record-breaking performances came to an end on Sunday when the curtain on the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was lowered.

It started beautifully with a historic opening ceremony held outside of a stadium; with the river Seine in Paris becoming a major tourist site as hundreds of athletes and officials put up spectacular displays on it to open the ceremony.

However, the controversy over LGBTQ+ and religious issues that followed the scripting or concept for the ceremony can also not be ignored.

The show on Sunday was equally electrifying as it featured the best from sports, music and entertainment sectors to give athletes and fans a perfect giveaways.

There were a few hitches, though. For instance, the men’s triathlon event was delayed for a day following concerns over the quality of water in the Seine River.

Officials postponed the event to improve the swimming portions of the river.

But generally, it will go into the annals of the event as one of the best managed games.

The United States of America once again proved their mettle in sports – not football, total sports, winning 126 medals.

The closest was China with 91 and the Great Britain winning a total of 65.

Definitely, every sports fan would be proud of sports administrators in such regions.

Back home, the Ghanaian contingent of two swimmers on Wild Cards, sprinters and high jumper, Rose Amoaniwaa Yeboah, accompanied by officials have returned and fellow Ghanaians are still proud of them, despite coming home empty-handed.

They cannot be blamed all the time. They competed under difficult circumstances. They were ill-motivated.

Having usually lambasted both athletes and officialdom in the past depending on where the heartbreak will come from, it is important to shift the focus a bit to take a holistic look as Africa as a continent to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

Africa won 39 medals overall made up of 13 gold, 12 silver and 14 bronze medals spread across 12 nations.

Kenya recorded the highest number of 11.

Comparatively, that marks an increase of two medals at the Tokyo 2020 games (held in 2021 due to COVID-19 outbreak) held in Japan but below the 45 recorded in Rio 2016.

That raises serious concerns about the direction for sports in Africa. Countries are spending huge sums to develop or build formidable teams to be at the top but it is not so in Africa.

What is available is also not spread evenly as the chunk of the sports budgets are spent on football, sometimes to the detriment of the other sports.

Surely, with this approach, Africa will keep playing second fiddle to the other nations.

But Africa’s problem with sports is actually bigger than what the eye can see and instead of tackling it head on, officials play around them, raising the hopes of her people.

Apart from the issue of finance, African states also face a huge challenge with infrastructure and many other factors that makes it difficult to raise world class athletes or competitors at home.

A piece on the BBC website on the performances of African nations is quite revealing and shocking, and even scary if a Ghanaian dreams about seeing a fellow Ghanaian mount the Olympic podium to receive a gold medal.

According to the report, the team that represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, was awarded just over £245m ($313m) for the Paris Olympic cycle.

This may sound like a dream.

The United States, meanwhile, boasts world-class facilities, a college system providing a pipeline of top-level talent in individual and team sports and huge sponsorship deals.

Egypt is the only African country dreaming about closing that huge gap by spending billions of dollars building sports complexes, partly with a view to bid to host the Olympics in 2036 or 2040.

May be, the shortest route to an African challenge is to start planning at a certain level to accept that the continent is lagging behind and instead of practicing mass sports at this level, countries should consider events with competitive advantages.

Botswana won its second successive medal in the men’s 4x400m relay in Paris – with South Africa and Zambia also in that final – and 200m champion LetsileTebogo secured the country’s first ever gold.

Countries that are good in boxing, long distances, the jumps and others must rather focused on investing heavily in them to raise the athletes needed to make the continent proud.

But that could also put the continent in the dark regarding the field and indoor event but no matter the plan of action, it must be one that will put the continent in the limelight.

But a few medals in those with competitive advantages could make a better case than presenting hundreds of half-baked athletes to disappoint.

The countdown for Los Angeles 2028 begun the moment the Games flag was handed over to officials from the popular US state and Ghana, just like other countries, may have less than a week short of four years to prepare.

By Andrew Nortey