Nigerian Athletes Are Mediocre —Amike

Former Nigeria 400m huddles champion, Henry Amike, has labeled the current crops of Nigerian athletes as mediocre who are not capable of  winning medals at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Henry Amike told 2muchsports.com that the standard of the athletes representing Nigeria at major international meets are not good enough and cannot favourably compete at the same level with their counterparts in other countries.

“You have athletes who are still running 10.3s who are your national champions and they are the ones representing the country at international meets.

“How do you expect the athletes to compete with their mates who are running 9.6s in the same event. They are more of local champions, and they are not doing anything to change the situation,” said Amike.

Amike said further that he had to work harder on getting to the US in order to compete with athletes over their who were running faster than him.

“Before I left Nigeria I was running 52s and I was the national champion at the time. When I got to the US I realised that 52s could not even make it to the second rounds. So I had to go back to the drawing board.

“The first two years I spent in the US was like a training period for me. But by the time I came back I was able to make it to the Olympics, the World Championship and other top meets,” added Amike.

To this end, he advised that Nigeria should not have any hope of raking medals at the London 2012 Olympics, saying that the country do not have the athletes that can spring such surprises. More so, Amike maintained that preparation for the Games is already too late.

“I can tell you that the London 2012 Olympic Games is too close for us to perform any magic. I never subscribe to crash programme in my life. We are in November now and most of the sports federations are yet to know their faith.

“In my time, we would have known by December who and who would run for Nigeria. But this is no longer the case. And seeing what happened at the last All Africa Games in Maputo, we will see that our athletes are still struggling,” Amike said.