The 16th edition of the IAAF WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS got underway at venue of the 2012 London Olympics on Friday, 4th August, 2017.
In all, Team Ghana has 8 athletes, competing in 5 events, 4 of which are individual events.
Team Ghana didn’t have an event till Day 2 of the competition, Saturday, 6th August. The day proved to be a black one for us.
Emmanuel Dasor who had come into the 400m competition with so much confidence, having run has lifetime best of 45.43sec. Sustained an injury to his knee on the eve of his race, ultimately, ruling him out of the competition. Kindly spare a thought for the affable but plucky young man.
According to our UK based reporter Akwasi Afriyie Rosky with Ahomka Radio, GAA President Professor Francis Doudu is the only official from Ghana who is currently with the team in London.
Another disaster was to follow soon afterwards as, perhaps, not too surprisingly, women triple jumper, Nadia Eke failed to finish in the top 12 places in order to advance to the next stage of the competition. She, instead was down in 23rd. Nadia had actually failed to achieve the distance required by the IAAF in order to compete at the championships. She was only allowed in by virtue of her being the reigning African champion. In some cases, competition rules allow an Area (continental) champion who hasn’t got the required mark to still compete.
Alex Amankwah is another sad case and he must be extremely disappointed in himself. If he had managed anything close to his Pb of 1:44.80, he definitely would have qualified from his group.
Overall, no one out of the 5 heats ran a time close to Alex’s Personal best of . He came into this competition on the back of having run his life-time best time. Confidence must have been very high but unfortunately, he could only finish in 4th place with a time of 1:47.56sec.to end a disastrous Saturday for us.
Team Ghana had not had an event since that rather disappointing Saturday till last night (Tuesday) when Janet Amponsah took to the track to compete in the 200m.
Just like some of her team mates,the 24 year old former student of Kumasi Girls’ SHS,had also come to London with a personal best time of 22.90sec achieved at El Paso,Texas in May this year. However, the El Paso competition proved to be her last proper competition before travelling to London for the championships. It appears, the long period without a proper competition before the global one may have affected her. She was slow out of her block, and would normally recover but not this time. She never fully recovered. In the end, she finished in lowly 4th position with a time of 23.77sec to bomb out of the 200m competition. The last time she had such a poor time was 4 years ago on 21st June, 2013 in Calabar. Her time then was very similar to last night’s, 23.79sec.
Ghana’s next event will be on Saturday when Janet joins Flings Owusu Agyepong,
Gemma Acheampong,Akua Obeng Akrofi and Persis William Ofori in trying to salvage something for us in the woman’s 4×100m relay.
Story by CaptainStonne