4th September, 2012
Nigeria’s number one wheelchair tennis player, Wasiu Yusuf has blamed the team’s failure to progress beyond the second round of the 2012 Paralympic Games to the absence of modern wheelchairs in the country.
Wasiu told P.M.News in a telephone chat from London after losing in the second round to world’s number three, Scheffers Maikel, 6-2, 6-1 on Sunday, that their opponents are not all that fantastic as the results suggested. He claimed that their opponents competed with modern wheelchairs, which are better than the ones they are used to in Nigeria.
“The match was fine and I thank God for seeing me through despite the fact that I lost. I’m glad that I used the Games to garner more experience that would be valuable for me in the future,” he said.
“I want to say that our opponents are not fantastic, it’s just that the wheelchairs they used gave them an advantage over us.
“However, for Nigeria’s wheelchair tennis players to succeed, we need modern equipment and sponsorship to attend tournaments outside the country,” said Yusuf, who featuredat the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
The other Nigerian wheelchair tennis player, Alex Adewale, also lost in the first round and was not happy about the result.
—Damilare Okunola