Where does Ghana Athletics go from here?

With the first track and field (athletics) event of the 2002 Commonwealth Games slated to start on July 26th, exactly three months from today, it is instructive to ask what the state of Ghana’s preparation is, particularly against the backdrop of the seeming confusion in the camps of both athletes and officials. It appears that, as always seems to be the case, the sequence of events began with athletes training hard in the hope of an opportunity to represent the nation. Then, the “response” from the camp of the officials was an illegitimate selection that clearly, but typically, failed to consider the performances of ALL Ghanaian athletes. In turn, the response from the athletes, also typical, was the usual outburst of protest. What some officials failed to factor into their calculation this time around, was the fact that the internet has made us all denizens in the proverbial “global village”. Thus, unlike in the past where the protests could be contained such that the nation did not “hear” the cries of the athletes, in 2002 the officials find themselves in the unusual position of having to backtrack and come up with explanations for their inappropriate actions. All of this can only be good, because it sets the table for progress in, at least, one dimension of Ghanaian lives.

The blame game: should our officials be allowed to feign innocence? Still, according to the grapevine, the response of the officials to the open challenge from athletes in the electronic and print media is one where instead of coming clean to admit their fault, they are reverting to the tendency of blaming “smaller fry” for the “mistakes” in the selection process. The national athletics coach has essentially been demoted, while the secretary of the national association has been reassigned to the Greater Accra regional office. Both punishments were meted out by the acting chief executive of the National Sports Council, the same gentleman who announced the selections. So, the obvious questions is, should the blame be laid at the doorstep of the coach and secretary alone? We are hardly fools, and all we have to do is go back and read the definitive assertiveness with which the acting chief executive announced the selections. It was, after all, he who came out with the false performances of specific athletes, arguing that he had access to international statistics. After stating that the days of coming back empty from competitions was over and that selection had been done by a “competent games committee” which ensured that “only the best” were picked, we hear that the pressure from the athletes have led to a subsequent retracing of steps, with a few more athletes (essentially, those named in the media challenges), being added to the team. Conceptually, this is problematic and an inappropriate way to resolve a foundational problem. There is a problem with the initial selection and all we do is add more names, thinking that it will appease certain athletes? The officials are underestimating the collective resolve of the athletes to rid their association of such problems once and for all.

The about-face of the officials is itself typical; you may recall that in January of this year, the THEN head coach came out to announce that a team of three had been selected, only for this to be retracted when a barrage of articles similar what we have seen this month surfaced in the media. Can you imagine that in January, even before the 2002 season begun and any of our athletes had even competed, a team had already been selected? What impunity!

The officials’ scampering is also not new. You may recall that after the Sydney Olympics they blamed athletes for giving them false performances, when queried about why the country had paid for unqualified athletes to go all the way to Sydney…and after the Atlanta relay debacle in 1996, there was an attempt to make Eric Nkansah the scapegoat…and at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, Ernest Obeng was made the victim of inappropriate accusations…so, it appears that the cycle is such that officials screw up and then blame athletes. This time, athlete responses (prior to the competition) seem to have preempted the typical sequence of events. Thus, in turn, the more senior officials have apparently pointed the finger of blame at junior officials. When will people in authority recognize that their authority comes with responsibility such that they need to stand up and take blame for such outcomes?

An athletes’ association

What is new this time around is that athletes have come together and have elected a representation that gives them a coordinated mechanism for responding promptly to these injustices. The voice of athletes is unified and concerted and comes across as reasoning and well-researched, rather than emotional (at least for the most part). And it is having an effect. The recent turn of events (e.g., demotion of head coach) in Ghana supports this. The acting chief executive of the sports council allegedly now admits that the selection was erroneously done, which is quite a statement if true, coming from the same man who had earlier given credit to a “competent games committee” team that had selected only “the best”, and who then, enumerated specific largely false performances or results upon which the selection of particular individuals was based. As stated above, the athlete responded by pointing out how false certain announced performances were (and this time it was certainly not the selected athletes who misinformed the officials, as the chief executive claimed that he had access to international federations and rankings).

An ongoing chess game: anticipating the officials’ next step

Based on our experiences with our sports establishment, the next ploy we anticipated was that the officials would claim that they had already submitted the selected names to the Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee as the deadline for entries had passed (yes, they have used that one before too, and we have some of our athletes ready to document that our officials used this false ploy during the countdown to both the 1999 African Games and the 2000 Sydney Olympics). You may wonder why the officials would do something like that? Well, if they can convince the country that the deadline has passed then that sort of guarantees that the submitted names (submitted before anyone could react to the selection), including their own names, are virtually guaranteed making the trip. A little self-preservation maybe? Yes, but at substantial cost to the country, as it manifests itself in selections for an end-of-July competition being submitted before mid-April, long before many Ghanaian athletes even compete for the first time; you should know that some of our athletes, conscious of potentially being blamed for over-competing, have been delaying the start of their season in order to be fresh by the time July rolls around.

Nevertheless, on the basis of our anticipation we preemptively sought “intelligence” (I’ve always wanted to use that word) that indicated that, even today, the deadline has not passed. Apparently, the officials have played to form and are allegedly already arguing that the submitted names can not be changed because the deadline has passed. Well, I’d like to share with you the fact that even the Canadians and British (arguably, the most “Commonwealth” of all Commonwealth countries) have not even held their trials yet; in other words, if what our officials say is true, then these countries have missed the deadline for entries (let’s not forget that it is the British who are hosting these games). A visit to the Commonwealth Games website (see last sentence on that page) will indicate that the British trials are not until June. The website is: http://www.commonwealthgames.com/SPORTS/Athletics/News/default.asp?id=200&folder=Athletics For the Canadians, the trials are from June 21-23, and athletes have until midnight June 30th to justify their inclusion (in other words, the trials comprise only one component of the qualifying standard). Evidence of the Canadian selection process can be found at: http://www.athleticscanada.com/AthcanTeamSelections/020216_commonwealth.html The Scottish, in turn, informed us that their deadline to send entries to Manchester is June 25th (and anyone can send e-mail to Kelly Seath, the office manager for the Scottish Commonwealth Games Council at [email protected] to confirm this). The point clearly is that the deadline has not passed, so please be skeptical of any Ghanaian official who tells you otherwise.

It’s not too late, so what must be done to salvage the situation?

The long and short of the matter is that there is chaos in the athletes’ camp, as frustration with the process hits home. Indeed, the psychological toll on athletes of this shoddy process is immense; you have athletes unable to give off their best in training, others who are spending so much time on the internet and telephone (instead of training) trying to get the public’s attention, and lets not forget that most of these athletes are also students who have the additional burden of end-of-year exams coming up shortly. Yes, the situation is quite chaotic and has led to considerable loss of focus among many of our athletes who are trying to prepare themselves to represent us. At the same time, the officials’ nest is also obviously in disarray and that, too, does not do much for confidence. So what is needed? What should be done? The way forward is at the same simple and straightforward. A higher authority needs to weigh in on the ongoings. The Honorable Minister must step in to introduce (note that I didn’t say “restore”) trust, legitimacy, and confidence in the system. He has to show that there is indeed “zero tolerance” for corruption, because there is enough evidence that this process has been corrupted for ages. The Honorable Minister’s intervention will go a long way to maximizing whatever success remains possible and, thereby, ensuring efficient use of Ghana’s dollars that have been earmarked for the Games.

What we can not do is trust the same team that caused the problem to remedy it. You will note that after the challenge to January’s selection of three athletes, the same three simply had four names added in the selection of seven this time around. Our “intelligence” is that in response to our protests about this selection of seven, the next plan is to add three or four more names to the seven. In other words, there is a core of three athletes, who through this entire year have been earmarked for selection…regardless of how their relative preferences measure up against anyone else’s. Isn’t there a saying that “the more things change, the more things say the same”? Here we are arguing that the fundamental structure is faulty; it behooves us to realize, then, that just adding athletes at the margin will not remedy the system. The same officials can not be counted on to fix this problem.

Specific recommendations about the way forward

So, how do we propose the selection problem be remedied? First, we should look at available global/commonwealth rankings to determine which of our athletes are most likely to win us medals. That means, looking at the world rankings and seeing where our people rank relative to other Commonwealth athletes. Thus, for instance, if we have a high jumper who is currently ranked 12th in the world, we should select him or her AFTER we select a sprinter who is ranked 17th, IF the eleven people ranked higher than our high jumper are all from Commonwealth countries, BUT none of the sprinters ranked higher than ours is from a Commonwealth country. Conversely, were the goal to select a team for the WORLD Championship (instead of the Commonwealth Games), we would pick the jumper over the sprinter in this hypothetical example. Second, we have to set a date on which we will conduct the selection exercise, and given how uncommunicative the officials have been I propose Friday, June 21st as a reasonable deadline because that date will give all the athletes who are only now becoming aware of their opportunity to be legitimately selected the maximum amount of time to justify their inclusion, while it still allows us enough time to ensure the entries reach Manchester by June 30th. I can not overemphasize the point that it will be detrimental to the integrity of the process to simply insert Andrew Owusu, Samuel Okantey, Christian Nsiah, and Monica Twum to the previously selected seven, simply because they have been bases for debunking the officials’ illegitimate selection process. What would happen then if three weeks adding these four Leo Myles-Mills, Vida Nsiah, or Helena Wrappah, all of whom are training very hard produce selection-worthy performances? Would we then send another supplementary list to Manchester? Then two weeks later, Ibrahim Hassan breaks the national record…then what? Let’s do this properly once and for all, and avoid the oft-tempting easy route of adhoc-ism. We must recall the submitted entries and do this the right away. Third, we should make sure that we disseminate this information widely. ALL Ghanaian athletes should receive this information, not just the favorite ones. Finally, I propose that the same sort of incentive system that rewards nothing but performance or productivity, be applied to selecting coaches. What do I mean? The automatic traveling of a handful of coaches to every competition has to end. We should also be selecting which coaches get to travel on MERIT! Coaches who produce athletes should be rewarded such that, for instance, the coach who produced the highest ranked home-based athletes in a given year gets to travel with the national team the following year. For so long, we have had coaches on the ground producing some of the best athletes year after year (coaches A. O. Lawson and Willie Williams come to mind) who hardly get rewarded with an opportunity to travel, or for that matter with anything substantial. At the same time, we have had a handful of coaches who traveled whether or not they contributed anything significant to the development of athletes. Isn’t the disincentive in such a system glaring? And we wonder why Ghana athletics has been on the decline. The truth of the matter is that the bulk of our national athletes are now either resident overseas, or training abroad for much of the year. Thus, the coaches who get to travel with the team are not necessarily the coaches of the selected athletes and they hardly serve as “coaches” during these international assignments. Technically, during these periods very little gets transmitted from the home-based coach to the foreign-based athlete who is often still in touch with his overseas coach. Thus, the system I propose won’t compromise the training of our athletes. Rather, it will provide considerable incentive, and also foster the much-needed exposure to our MOST-PRODUCTIVE, but deprived, coaches. Also, allowing some of the foreign coaches of our overseas-based athletes to interact with our selected local coaches would yield symbiotic effects all around.

These are four steps that can be implemented immediately. Then for next year, we can take the world rankings that accrue at the end of 2002 and, for example, use the 20th, 50th, and 100th ranking performance in EACH event (to ensure fairness across events) as A, B, and C standards, respectively, as we enter the next year. Issuing these performance levels in tandem with the published World Championship qualifying standards before the next season starts, and setting a deadline for qualification, will make it very clear to all our athletes what is expected of them and what it will take to get selected. We might, for example, use the 20th or even 30th performance across all events as the qualifying benchmark for selecting a World Championship team, whereas we might use the 50th rank for African Championship selection. If there is still an ECOWAS games, the 100th ranking performance might be ideal for that. I use these figures only illustratively; the point really is that it is not difficult to introduce objectivity into the selection process, and this should enhance motivation, focus, confidence, and performance. Of course, if we find ourselves in the luxurious situation of having more athletes qualified than we can afford to take, we simply have to revert to the rankings to select the highest ranked.

Other considerations including the value of training tours, relay selections, and the like? There are other discussions that need to be held vis-?-vis the benefit/cost associated with those expensive training tours and camps. In an earlier piece, I wrote: "It is counterproductive for athletes who have been under the tutelage of one coach or another, in Texas, Tennessee, or Virginia to be asked to return to train on Ghana’s difficult tartan track and be subjected to the all the frustrations inherent of camps in Ghana. At the same time, it is inappropriate to have the athletes who have performed well under a coach’s tutelage (for months or years) to be asked to spend the last eight weeks with a set of national coaches who have little know﷓how regarding that specific athlete’s training and progression over the current year. In a team sport, or for the relay, the argument could be made that some camp is necessary (the American relay teams have two or three very short camps, which all their sprinters have to attend to develop teamwork, but they are hardly asked to be away from their principal coach for the most critical period leading up to the competition). Besides, our coaches have been known to show up at camps without batons and go for weeks without spending any of the imprest to buy one. There are many examples of this. So, why should we waste national resources on training tours that are actually counterproductive? We shouldn’t accept the officials’ claims that these tours facilitate monitoring; yeah right! When was the last time we sent an athlete home after a training tour because they were off﷓form? Besides, even for Sydney when athletes hadn’t qualified weren’t they illegitimately taken from the training tour on to the Olympics because of “special dispensation?” And these camps are often not in the ideal locations, and typically lack access to all the facilities and healthcare athletes need? Were coaches not almost stranded in Holland for non-payment of costs? I am sure if we put our minds together we can end these counterproductive camps and come up with a more responsible and cost-effective approach that also actually helps our athletes improve or maintain their form in the critical last days before the major competitions. Why anyone would want to camp in Holland, a country known for its wet and dreary weather immediately prior to a major competition in a place like Sydney is beyond me.

And on relay team selection, I have gone on record as suggesting that we really should not be endeavoring to send five or six athletes to represent us, if only one or two have met the qualification standard for an event, however that is defined. As long as we have, say, three sprinters qualified then I think it becomes cost-effective AND meaningful to add two others to compose a relay team. Ghana has been, for so long, on the verge of projecting herself back onto the global scene in a big way. Yet, we always seem to let the country down by falling apart at major championships. I submit that the primary cause is not traceable to money; rather, it has to do with all these issues associated with selection, morale, etc. For instance, when one is not sure that one’s good performances are going to translate into a position on the World Championship team, the rational choice for that athlete to make, is to try to translate their good form into dollars on the European circuit by competing very often. Still, any athlete worth their salt knows that success at the Olympics, for example, translates into much more money than frequent appearances in Europe (without Olympic success) can yield. As well, we all know that numerous appearances prior to a major championship compromise one’s opportunity to be successful at the championship. Thus, anyone who was running well and was certain that their performance would be enough to get them selected onto the team for the major championship would have enough sense to not over-compete before the games. For most, the over-competing can be traced to the feeling that their good performance would still not result in selection, so that they would be foolish to get to the end of the season without having competed simply because they were waiting for a Ghanaian selection invitation that never came (it is worth noting that even as of today, most of our top athletes have not been contacted by our officials in 2002). I did this early in my career and regretted it. For today’s athletes, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that they don’t have to be faced with such a distasteful choice. These athletes train to make us proud, and we owe them the opportunity to earn pride too.

We must all, every single one of us, own the responsibility of ensuring that our officials conduct themselves honestly, and in a transparent and efficient manner. That is the obligation associated with democracy. The nation’s resources are at stake (and in our hands). Apathy has allowed the status to persist for decades. Now it is time to give the young athletes back their rights. Let’s all protest this injustice.

In the service of Ghana Sports,