A former athlete and current health technology worker, Deji Sofoluke has called on officials of Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) as well as top shots of the National Sports Commission (NSC) to undertake a thorough analysis of factors that prevented two of the country’s top medal hopes from clinching gold at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland.
Sports247 reports that, while Nigerian sports officials, ex-athletes, media practitioners, and stakeholders are celebrating the nation’s seventh place finish on the Glasgow 2026 final medals’ table, Sofoluke pointed out that the contingent would have garnered more than 10 gold medals had Kanyinsola Ajayi won the men’s 100m and Tobi Amusan clinched the women’s 100m hurdles.
The former athlete, who is currently the operations lead at Breath For Life Limited, added in a chat with Sports247 that, instead of celebrating several consolation bronze medals, Nigeria’s sports authority should start asking what went wrong with Ajayi, Amusan and other eartwwhile medal favourites who failed to win their respective events in Glasgow.
health tech company personnel and sports enthusiast stressed that, aside from the suggestion of a knee injury that made Tobi fail to defend her title, the AFN and NSC should check all issues and factors that led up to her third place finish in the last race, after she excelled in the semi-final.
Sofoluke added, “I just hope the NSC and AFN realise the importance of a thorough analysis of why Kanyinsola and Tobi failed to win their races. They must check what went wrong in order to develop solutions for such setbacks to never be repeated in the future for any Nigerian athlete.
“That’s what proactive administrators do in working jurisdictions and towards making future projections. Tobi’s prior injury isn’t an excuse. Since she delivered a 12.19s with that injury, a great management would have calculated that the weather conditions might get worse before the final and would have known how that could aggravate her condition.
“They should have taken measures to forestall the weather from affecting her in the final. I have never seen Tobi topple any hurdle – not in the past four years – but she fell two to three in the final, and they were at the beginning of the race.
“For Kanyinsola, we don’t even know the reason why he chose to run his worst time in recent months during a crucial final. So, all that’s required to get to the root of the issue should be done to prevent a reoccurrence.”
Sofoluke concluded with a view that Ajayi and Amusan can both redeem themselves at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, USA, since they have the right quality to do so, but stressed that it depends mostly on how their officials can take proper stock of all pitfalls in Glasgow and work against any repeat of such in the nation’s subsequent outings.
“Instead of celebrating 10 gold medals overall for Nigeria, they have to thoroughly check the loopholes seen in Glasgow, so that these guys can win gold in the next Olympics. I believe they have the capacity to do so,” Sofoluke submitted.
){kind=link}