A 68-year-old retired track and field coach, Alaba Ogunde, has revealed how she discovered World and Commonwealth 100m hurdles champion, Tobi Amusan.
Amusan bagged gold medals at the recently concluded Athletics World Championships in Oregon as well as the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK.
She became the hurdles queen with a remarkable semi-final time of 12.12 seconds, smashing Kendra Harrison’s 2016 effort by 0.08 seconds at the World Championships.
Her final-round time of 12.06 seconds was ruled ineligible because of the presence of an illegal tailwind, despite the fact that she ran faster than that.
On Sunday morning at the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham, she ran a time of 12.30 seconds, which was fast enough to set a new Olympic record.
The Ijebu-Ode native helped lead the Nigerian women’s 4×100 relay team to its first-ever gold medal at the Commonwealth Games.
Ogunde, then 68 and a member of the Ogun State Sports Council, stated she found Amusan when she was stationed in Ijebu Ode in 2005, despite media reports citing a coach who claimed to have discovered the 25-year-old athlete.
She told The PUNCH: “I saw several reports that Tobi was discovered by someone else, but I want to make it clear that I was the one who discovered her.
“In 2004 I was transferred to Ijebu Ode sports council from the headquarters in Abeokuta. I was mandated to cover all areas, including the rural and the urban areas, and I visit almost all the schools back then.
“In the course of moving around, I discovered so many talents and Tobi was one of them. I also discovered Omotola Kuku and the mentor of Tobi herself, Biola Onakoya, who was a 400m runner and so many others.
“No doubt, one person cannot train a child, but I was the one who noticed that Amusan had what it took to become a future champion.
“She was a student of Our Ladies of Apostle in Ijebu Ode and the Games Master then was Adeyemi, though I cannot remember his other name and Dr Adetoye Alatise was the Chairman of Ijebu Ode Local Government Area, though he is now the Oba of Ososa Ijebu, he supported our course for the development of young talents.
“We had an U-15 athletics competition in Ogun State and my team won it for two consecutive times before being dethroned by Ilaro and Tobi was part of my success story.”
Ogunde added, “I was the head athletics coach in Ijebu Ode back then, and I had so many responsibilities and people around me. We do have trials, inter-house sports and so many other events and I had to hand over the supervision to one of the trainers known as Charlie Baba. He was an apprentice under Ayodele Solaja back then.
“He was the one that suggested that we merged them all with the athletes under Solaja and Tobi was very good in 100m, 200m, high jump and long jump. The truth is whoever is good in all these fields can easily cope with participating in 100m hurdles, as we saw with Chioma Ajunwa.
“The mentorship has been there before she even met Solaja, but he continued with their development.”
