Athletics Africa Magazine

Ethiopian sweetheart Tirunesh Dibaba has joined other 2008 Olympic champions Jamaican Usain Bolt and Russian Yelena Isinbayeva as the three athletes among the finalists for the 2009 Laureus World Sport Award. Dibaba was the first woman to claim the 5000m and 10,000m double at the same Olympic Games when she dominated in Beijing last summer. UTEP's Blessing Okagbare for the second time was named the Conference USA Co-Athlete of the Week . The 2008 Olympic Long Jump Bronze medallist from Nigeria beat out distinguished professionals such as Alice Falaiye, Ola Sesay and Tori Polk in the women's Long Jump at the 2009 UTEP Invitational soaring to a world season lead and NCAA regional qualifying mark of 6.86 metres .

Former African 400m champion and Roma '87 world silver medallist, Innocent Egbunike, has lamented the deplorable condition he found the Nigerian team at the just concluded 11th IAAF world championships in athletics in Osaka, Japan. Egbunike, who was in Osaka with the USA team as coach to Sydney 2000 Olympic 400m champion Angelo Taylor, recounted his experience in a write-up for the Nigerian Thisday newspaper. He explained that 20 years down the line the lack of organisation, forward planning and mediocrity of the Nigerian athletics officials has not abated, but instead has got much worse. More harrowing for the former African champion is the fact that the officials seem incapable to get the simplest things right - athletes were not registered on time for their events, the team do not have uniform kits and even they flew into the venue of the games on the day of their events.