Tokyo Olympic Games: Ghana’s relay team to camp in Europe

The Ghana Athletics Association, GAA; has revealed plans to camp the men's relay quartet in Europe ahead of the Tokyo Olympic Games.

Ghana’s team of Joseph Paul Amoah, Joseph Manu, Benjamin Azamati and Sean Safo-Antwi booked a place in the world’s biggest sports festival at the World Relays held in Poland last week.

The team was however disqualified from the final of the World Relay following a hitch in the baton change.

Bawa Fuseini, the Chief Executive Officer of the GAA told Joy News that the error was due to insufficient training time for the athletes.

He disclosed that the team could not practice the change as they did not have enough training schedules ahead of the competition.

To address this, Bawa Fuseini says the GAA is planning on camping the athletes for not less than two months in Europe.

He stated that the camping will help the athletes smoothen their rough edges and become more conversant with the changing procedures.

“The third athlete took off so early and he run across the exchange box so he took the baton out of the exchange box – that is around the 200 curve. He took off early so before Azamati got to him, he was already outside the exchange box. They need more time to practice.

“All these things are a result of a lack of practice, because they just got together about two days ago, if they had been practicing, even the ladies, if the ladies had been practicing, they could have also qualified to the finals,” Fuseini explained to Joy Sports.

“The plan that we have going forward is for them to have two months camping, so that they would be able to have enough time to have practice so these things will not happen.

“When the school goes on vacation at the end of May, we will necessarily have to move the team to Europe to camp them between June and July so that they will train together, practice together and they will get the exchange perfected before we get to the Olympic Games.”