No record broken at national athletics championship

Accra, Feb. 23, GNA - There were no new records at this year's national athletics championships held in Lome, Togo, as a de-motivated athletes failed to even equal existing ones.

The races were less competitive and unimpressive as both officials and athletes alike came out to justify the failure.

Some athletes told the GNA Sports that there was no point in striving for honours after five local athletes were selected for the Commonwealth Games in Australia before the trials commenced on Tuesday. Clement Agyeman (200 and 100 meters) of Georgina Sowah (Long jump) and Robert Martey (long jump), all from CEPS and Gifty Addy (100 and 200) of Immigration and Elizabeth Amelofo (100 and 200) of Police were hand-picked by the technical men because of their previous performances. But apart from Sowah who failed to glitter, the other four vindicated the selectors as they dominated their events.

The athletes attributed the rather abysmal performance to a paltry 40,00 cedis allowance each given to them by the officials for the three-day period.

But the officials told the GNA Sports that they could not be blamed for the flaws and attributed the ebb to the long spell of inactivity.

Sequel to this, the GAA has revived its selection process towards the All Africa Games in Mauritius in August and other future competitions.

The GAA earlier said winners in each event and their first runner ups would form the nucleus of "team Ghana" and would compete with the foreign-based athletes classified under category B in June for the final selection.

But after the rather unimpressive outing, the GAA said a team of technical men including Dr Pufa, Board Chairman of the National Sports Council, would compare the "times" clocked by the local athletes with the African record and then take a final decision as to whether the locals merit a call-up.