I am in London, hopefully on my way, in the next few days, to Paris, the host city of the 2024 Olympiad. I am very excited about visiting Paris again after two previous experiences that are significant chapters in my life.
48 years ago, my flight to my first Olympic Games experience started in a city people used to say, in those days, was so beautiful and romantic that after seeing Paris, you can die happily!
It happened in the month of June. I was only a few weeks away from graduating from The Polytechnic, Ibadan. Through the Oyo State Sports Council, the National Sports Commission contacted the office of the Rector of The Polytechnic, seeking my release to come to Lagos and proceed immediately to join the national football team, the Green Eagles, that were on tour of Europe preparing for the 1976 Olympic Games.
Coming completely from the Blue, it may be the most pleasant shock of my life. It was a quantum leap into uncharted frontiers of fate and fame. The Olympics were for gods, yet here was I, from nowhere, about to become one!
I had to submit an incomplete final project to my supervisor in the Mechanical Engineering department with the offer to return and defend the project after the national assignment. It was a most unusual situation for everyone.
Meanwhile, the list of Nigeria’s contingent was with the International Olympic Committee, IOC, and had been released to the public. A scintillating performance by me in the quarter-final of that year’s Africa Cup Winners Cup for Shooting Stars FC at the National Stadium, Lagos, made Dr. Isaac Akioye, Director of the National Sports Commission, NSC, in charge of Nigerian sports, to send an urgent request to the IOC to replace the name of an already registered player with mine.
That’s how, as in a dramatic scene straight out of Hollywood, I found myself on a flight to Europe for the first time, to join the Green Eagles, already touring, training and playing international friendly matches in Greece, Germany, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in final preparation for the Olympic Games.
At the end of the tour, some 10 days to the opening ceremony of Montreal ’76, the entire Nigerian contingent of athletes in various sports were assembled in Hotel Ibis, in Paris.
That was my first ‘taste’ of Paris. That’s where my 1976 Olympic story took off.
Of course, the rest of that story is now unforgettable history highlighted by the boycott of the Games by 28 African countries led by Nigeria and Tanzania, and several other equally historic consequences birthed through the decades till now.
I never got to visit Paris again until the France ’98 FIFA World Cup.
I was present when the Super Eagles put up their best performance at the championship, trouncing Spain by 3-2. Some friends and I spent the entire night walking the streets of Paris on a drinking binge.
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A few days later, on the streets of Paris, I also endured the agony that followed Nigeria’s painful loss to Denmark that ended my short-lived second romance with Paris.
That was 26 years ago. I have not been back there since then.
It is now Thursday July 26, 2024. I am heading back to Paris to witness a new ‘episode’ of the biggest multi-sports event on the planet. I am excited about the prospects of Nigerian athletes at the Games. The country’s 88-athlete contingent is brimming with talent, confidence, determination and a positive spirit.
I am eager to embed with them, particularly those in athletics where I think more of Nigeria’s haul of medals will likely come from.
I look forward to playing an unofficial role as an official Sports Ambassador of Nigeria, and sports diplomat of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA. I intend to add my humble voice to encourage, inspire and motivate the athletes to run faster, jump higher, throw farther and fight harder than they have ever done for their Fatherland.
Beyond that, I shall feed my journalistic impulses, and share personal experiences with audiences on my different platforms (print, radio, and social media) with unique sights and sounds of Paris
Once again, I have arrived London. I love the City. It is, in my humble opinion, one of the best destinations for social and cultural interaction in the world, a melting pot of everything. The city accommodates a little bit of every community on earth.
Interestingly, I have not visited London in almost 5 years, not since the Covid 19 pandemic struck and disturbed the equilibrium of the world. I became one of its victims. I not only contracted it mildly but also lost my UK residential status when I chose to hibernate in the ‘safe’ environment of the secluded hills of Wasimi, rather than be involved in the long, uncertain, expensive and complicated protocols that traveling to the UK during that period required.
It has been a nightmare since the end of ‘Covid’ trying to get any kind of respite to re-enter the UK. Even the present visit is possible only by the intervention of the top echelon of the British High Commission.
So, I am here now, at the banks of River Thames, working out the logistics of entering Paris at this time. The city is filled to the brim with visitors – the almost 20,000-strong army of athletes, technical officials, and the media. Plus, of course, the millions of summer-time tourists and sports fans that are descending right now on the city.
By the next time you are reading or hearing from me, I would have crossed the English Channel in a ‘bullet train’, the Eurostar, that travels at speeds of over 300 km/h deep through the famous underwater tunnels of the Channel.
I cannot wait to catch up with Tobi Amusan, Ese Brume, Odunayo Adekuoroye, Aruna Quadri, Esther Onyema, Funke Oshinaike, Opeyori Anuoluwapo, and so on, to share ‘communion’ of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
