The Media Attache of the Ghana Olympic Committee, Erasmus Kwaw, has told Citi Sports that the news stories making the rounds concerning Team Ghana at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland are blown out of proportion.
He was reacting to reports of an alleged near-physical confrontation between GOC boss, Prof. Francis Dodoo and Nestor Ghalley, President of the Ghana Badminton Association earlier this week.
According to the reports, an issue with the team’s kits caused the problem but Kwaw said even though there were disagreements between Prof. Dodoo and Ghalley, they did not get to the point of getting physical.
“I think that the story has been overly exaggerated and there has been a lot of negative reports about the team. The athletes always ask if there are people who want to do them in but there are never attempts to get the officials to say their side of the story,”Kwaw said on Citi Sports’ midweek discussion show, Half Time.
He continued,”Concerning the brawl, the Badminton team had their event last week and they had a problem with their jerseys because the names were not written in the proper order. The sport requires that the player’s name is written first and then his country.
Team Ghana put those details in the opposite way so they had a few issues with the officials. When the team returned in the evening after the event, those details had to be rewritten on the jersey to suit the official arrangements.
The GOC, upon inspection of the kits in the team’s store room, then asked why they had not been told of the official requirements on the jerseys and that prompted explanations from the Ghana Badminton officials. The kits were then to a sports shop and the corrections were made and I was involved in the correction buy celexa process.
There was nothing like a scuffle and there were many athletes there who can testify to this so I do not understand why there were such reports in the Ghanaian media and they did not contact us for any reaction or explanations.”
Kwaw also reacted to certain media reports that Team Ghana is suffering from a lack of kits and that the team washes its kits after each event. He gave details on how much each athlete was given in terms of kits.
“Each athlete was given a pair of shoes, two track suits (black/white and red), two t-shirts( white and black) and two extra t-shirts (red and green) and two polo shirts.
They made their choice from these and they were also given backpacks and bags for their luggage.
Respective sports were given specific footwear so for instance, the athletes have been given spikes and Janet Amponsah will be using her brand new Nike spikes in her 200m women’s heats later on Wednesday.
They were also given slippers for comfort when walking about.
They were also given socks, towels and headgear to help them with the weather in Glasgow.”
100m runner, Flings Owusu-Agyapong also aired her view on the reports on the lack of kits using the social networking site, Twitter.
She tweeted,”So apparently we only got one kit? Wash and wear. This is news to me! We all got more than enough!” in reference to the media stories and she added images of her kits.
So far, Team Ghana has only won one medal at the Games but the count could increase because Abdul Omar is in the semi-finals of the Men’s Flyweight and he will fight Muhammed Waseem of Pakistan on the 1st of August.
By: Nathan Quao/citifmonline.com/Ghana