Paris Olympics: Plans underway to qualify more wrestlers — Igali

The Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF) on Thursday said that efforts were being made to qualify more wrestlers for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Daniel Igali, the President of NWF, made this known in a telephone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)  in Ibadan.

According to Igali, plans are ongoing for more wrestlers to compete in the last Olympic qualifiers in May.

“As a federation, we’re very excited and pleased that our athletes six of them have been able to qualify for the Olympics.

”Unfortunately, Mercy Genesis, who we felt was a medal prospect in Paris, lost out in qualifications.

“We are looking at sending her to the last world qualifiers in Istanbul coming up in May.

”We are keeping our fingers crossed that we may even have more than six, maybe seven,” he said.

He added that the federation planned to ensure that athletes participated in two world level competitions between May and June.

“Before mid-April, we would have commenced our full camp for the Olympics, and we are not going to wait for the Federal Ministry Sports Development.

“Our timeline is set; we want to give all the needed opportunities for our athletes to qualify.

“In both tournaments that they would be attending, we want to give them an opportunity to camp for a week or two before they return to Nigeria,” he said.

Igali added that funding had been not just their challenge but ”the big elephant in the room”. (NAN).