The Ghana Athletics team will be in London next month (August) to compete in the 2017 IAAF world championship. The Ghana Athletics Associations aim is for the country to win medals at the tournament hence the need to be ready for the event which starts on August 14 in London, United Kingdom.
Team Ghana has 10 athletes to represent the country at the London championships.
Ghana will head into the Championship with athletes like Alex Amankwah, who holds a national record of 1:44seconds in the 800m.
Janet Amponsah, who clocked in with 23.10 seconds qualifying time in the 200m, Nadia Eke also goes into the competition as a continental champion in the long jump alongside sprinter Emmanuel Dasor and the women relay team.
Public relations officer of the Ghana Athletics Association, Erasmus Kwaw is adamant the team’s preparations are going just fine and is hoping to make a mark in the Championship.
“Ghanaians should expect a very quality performance form team Ghana on the athletics front of the world championships,” Erasmus said. “Our athletes will go out there and push their bodies to the limit to make the various stages of the competition that they will be taking part in.
“Alex Amankwah has been wonderful this year, running 1min 44, now if he is able to keep that form and bring it down to 1min 43 anything can happen.
“There’s Dasor who we expect to at least make the next men’s 4*100 with Wayde van Niekerk and quiet a lot of top quality athletes in that particular field. There’s Janet Amponsah who’s experienced the Olympics and she’s run exceptionally well this season – 23 seconds, if she can bring it down to 22 seconds then I think she has a real prospect of at least making the semi finals.”
He also admitted that Ghana over the years have lost athletes to foreign countries but are on the right track after replacing them with equal quality.
“We will also have to tell people, we just have to be realistic in our aspirations for them.” He continued.
“For some of them they will go into the competition ranked very low in some of the events they will be competing and so medal prospect is a bit of an argument at this stage, you just don’t know how things will go but we know is they will try to make the quarter final, semi finals and if possible the final.”
The world championship will take place from 14th August to 13th September and it promised to feature tough countries likes the United State of America, Jamaica, Australia, China, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Great Britain.
By: Nana Akua Amankwaah|TV3 Sports|Ghana