Team Nigeria begins Tokyo 2020 Olympics preparations today

• Minister meets with federations, stakeholders
Team Nigeria will begin their preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games today, Sports Minister, Sunday Dare has revealed.

The minister, who disclosed that Nigeria would focus only on sports in which the country had competitive advantage, said next year’s Olympics would not be the usual jamboree witnessed in the recent past, adding that efforts were on to ensure the country returned from Tokyo with medals.

Speaking in Lagos yesterday, Dare said he was optimistic that the team’s progression, which started at the 2019 African Games and IAAF World Championships, would be climaxed in Tokyo with the country recording its best performance at the Olympics since Beijing 2008.

Nigeria did not win any medal at the London 2012 Games, while it could only get a bronze medal through football at the Brazil 2016 edition. But the minister hopes Tokyo would be a different event.

“I am an optimist and it is too early to call the scores of the medals for this country in Tokyo. The preparation for the Olympics normally starts after the end of the previous one. Beyond what you see in Morocco and Doha, our athletes have been competing in different competitions.

“Individually, they have been training and that is the preparation. From what we saw in Morocco and Doha, that was a benchmark. It took us seven years to get another medal in Doha, but there are lessons learnt from the World Championships.

“This time around in Tokyo, we are not starting too late and not too early but we have about nine months to go and we are all ready.