Sports was once a very big part of the Nigerian culture, but as we all know it has been monopolized by football. Sporting activities of the 50s down to the 80s included much more than football, they included athletics, swimming, table tennis, lawn tennis, basketball and boxing amongst many others.
The sports stars of those times were considered heroes.
Here are some of the guys that brought glory to the land through thier individual sporting prowess.
Emanuel Ifeajuna, the first black African to win a gold medal in an international sporting event.
Peter Fregene
Quoting Odegbami in an article written in 2010 "In Goal - This has to be a close call between Peter Fregene and Inua Lawal Rigogo. Both were great show men, acrobats and very flamboyant goalkeepers. They both 'flew' like birds in the air. Peter played longer for the national team than Lawal who was nicknamed the Flying Cat by Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah. It was Peter who kept in goal for Nigeria at the Mexico Olympics where the team held Brazil to a two-two draw. Peter also played across three decades from the 1960s up till the 1980s. For those reasons, even if several people consider Inua 'safer hands', Peter Fregene stands out as the goalkeeper of that decade".
Continue......
Hogan kid Bassey, he was the first Nigerian boxer to hold the world championship in 1957.
Nduka Odizor was a lawn tennis star, who ranked no.20 worldwide. With seven career titles and his participation in the four major grand slams he made lawn tennis a national sport.
No comments:
Post a Comment