World Athletics has reportedly disqualified Nigeria’s women’s 4x400m team from 2020 Tokyo Olympics following some technical errors in the race where they secured qualification.
Nigerian quartet – Nse Imaobong, Favour Ofili, Knowledge Omovoh, and Patience Okon-George – ran a season’s best 3:26.83 at Lagos Open Athletics Championships on June 24 which was held at Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.
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The win ensured they climbed to 13th on the WA Top List from the 18th position they initially occupied.
However, according to TheCable, WA sighted technical errors in the race and consequently determined that the result won’t count.
It is reported that result of the race was not ratified by WA, who didn’t reflect the qualification results on the Road to Tokyo tool used to determine qualified athletes on their website, when the final list was published on Thursday.
‘Road to Tokyo‘ is an online tool to help athletes, media and fans track the qualification process for next year’s Olympic Games.
Confirming the development to the publication, Dare Esan, a media representative of Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), said the technical errors that led to the rejection of the result was the absence of any form of demarcations between the track and field while the race was ongoing.
He stated;
The technical error is an issue of demarcations usually placed around the stadium by the inside lane. This will let the athletes know the boundaries and enable monitoring. Unfortunately, this wasn’t done by the organisers of the race.
Esan also stated that the competition wasn’t organised by AFN but the Lagos state Athletics Association, an affiliate of the federation.
He added;
The AFN did not organise the race. And the AFN doesn’t need to supervise a competition, especially if an affiliate body hosts it. It’s like AFN holding a competition and expecting World Athletic to come and supervise; no, they trust us to do the right thing.
