By Millicent Ifeanyichukwu
Lagos – Cecelia Arinye, the Director of Sports, University of Lagos (UNILAG), has urged athletes to combine sports with education to have something to fall back upon when active sports life was over.
Arinye gave the advice when the maiden Nigeria Taekwondo Federation’s (TFN) Invitational Championships held at the UNILAG Sports Hall on Thursday in Lagos.
She promised to provide necessary assistance to taekwondoists to enable them to combine sports with their education.
She said that “the choice of building a career in sports is lovely, but education is paramount and we really want to encourage taekwondo athletes to combine both effectively.
“Education will be your fallback on after retiring from active sports life, so, we are offering to assist interested candidates to get admission into UNILAG but they must meet the necessary requirements.
Arinye urged the taekwondoists taking part in the championships to take advantage of the event to exhibit their talents, while abiding strictly to competition rules and discipline.
Ashiru said the initiative was to reposition the sport against the backdrop of its inability to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, held in Brazil.
“This is an innovation by the taekwondo family to plan early for the next Olympics, whereby the best fighters will be identified and prepared for Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“The objective prompted us to specifically invite states that have produced national ranked champions, Africa and Commonwealth Games medallists and those who participated in the Olympic trials,’’ he said.
He noted that the Olympic standard electronic scoring system would be used to train the fighters to improve their individual skills.
According to him, the use of the system will bring to minimum the interference of referees during fights and that they will raise a flag where need be for a video replay.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the championships are organised by the NTF and sponsored by its President, George Ashiru.
The competition, restricted to Best 16 state teams and NTF nationally ranked athletes, was to select competent athletes ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan.
Dignitaries present at the event were the Director-General of Korea Cultural Centre, Jeong Sun Suh, Chairman Lagos State Taekwondo Association, Jimi Ogunlowo and World Taekwondo Federation certified referees among others.
