Olympics: Ghana should build coaches’ capacity – Adorkor

In view of Ghana’s poor showing at the just-ended Olympic Games in Rio, there is the need to identify countries that are doing well in almost all sports disciplines and send potential coaches, past performers, and interested Ghanaians there for training, Erasmus Adorkor, Director of the National Sports College, University of Education, Winneba, has said.

Many Ghanaians were left disappointed by the performance of Team Ghana at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The country’s 16-member team failed to advance beyond the first round of their respective individual competitions at the Olympic Games. The last time Ghana won a medal at the Olympics was during the Barcelona 1992 Games.

That was a bronze in the men’s football event. That added to the three previous Olympic medals that were won in boxing. In all, Ghana has managed only four Olympic medals, in comparison with Kenya, Africa’s best performers at the Games, hauling in 86.

Mr Adorkor, speaking in an interview with Class Sports’ Kwame Dwomoh-Agyeman, said: “All that we are interested in is the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, African Championships. If the ministry says there is no money for you to go, then we end up fighting, but we have to go.

"If we don’t go, we will be sanctioned. All these things are lies. Let’s come back and build the college. Let’s have bilateral agreements with countries taking into consideration their various comparative advantages and bring their coaches there. We can also send a lot of our potential coaches there as well, past performers, and even interested people there for training.”

He further called on government to support the athletes who competed at the just-ended Olympic Games with the needed resources to develop their talents.

“They are already outside making use of modern facilities and good coaches I suppose. So, what we need to do now is support them with some funds so that they will be focused and concentrated. If they are concentrating only on the sport, we support them with funding as far as their coaches are concerned; that is the way forward. But Ghana, with our history, should not be performing the way we are. We have participated in Rio 2016, and it is unfortunate we couldn’t win anything. We can also ask ourselves: ‘How did we prepare?’”