BY OJO SAMSON AYOMIDE
The Future Olympian Athletics Classic, earlier slated for the first quarter of 2026, has been moved to the last quarter of the year so as to make it a national event, incorporating all six geopolitical zones rather than some section of the country.
A statement signed by Dr. Bruce Ijirigho, a renowned quarter miler and Team Nigeria’s captain to the botched Montreal 76 Olympic Games, said the postponement will enable the Organising Committee to come up with a national plan that will ensure that talents in all parts of Nigeria are discovered and nurtured to become the best in the world.
This competition is being organised by The Youth Sports Renaissance Foundation (YSRF), a non-profit organisation registered with the CAC by Bruce Ijirigho, Godwin Obasogie and Charlton Ehizuelen, to revive sports, especially athletics, in secondary schools all over Nigeria.
Ijirigho, who is the Project Lead, revealed that the Future Olympian Athletics Classic is not about reinventing the wheel.
However, it is about bringing back the culture that ensured he and his contemporaries were discovered early, when they were in Secondary School, and given the right coaching tutorials and academic support that enabled many of them to get sports scholarships and combine sports and education. Many of them later became national, continental and global champions.
Said Ijirigho, ‘’ the bane of sports in Nigeria and many African countries is that our youth don’t get opportunities early enough, and lack modern coaching techniques that are age-appropriate to accelerate their development.
‘‘The Future Olympian Athletics Classics will not only ensure that we discover talents in their early teens but also include international coaching clinics that will transfer skills to the Games masters and coaches for better success. That way, we will do a better job of nurturing them to become Olympians and world beaters by the time they are in their late teens and early twenties. And that is why this competition is strictly for students in High School, it’s a developmental programme.”
Ijirigho also discussed the wisdom behind moving the programme from some sections of the country to include all six geopolitical regions, “Talents abound in every nook and cranny of the country. Therefore, we want to give students in every part of the country opportunities to be discovered. There are great middle and long distance runners in many parts of the country that were not discovered at all or discovered too late, ditto sprinters, quarter-milers, jumpers, hurdlers, and other athletes in different events and parts of the country. With the postponement, we will be able to widen the tent and give all our youth equal opportunity’’.
Ijirigho is optimistic that the future of global athletics belongs to Nigerians and Nigeria: “We have what it takes to dominate athletics in the world; all we need to do is get our development programme right, and that is what the Future Olympians Athletics Classic will do for our youth and the country once it starts in the last quarter of 2026.”