I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED
Usain Bolt inspires him... now Ogbene wants to use his pace to help Hatters’ survival bid
v LUTON star Chiedozie Ogbene grew up watching Usain Bolt - and is now reaching top speed in the Premier League.
Ogbene has been recorded as the third fastest player in the top flight, behind Tottenham defender Micky van de Ven and Manchester City’s Kyle Walker.
But the Nigeria-born winger is using Bolt as his inspiration as he bids to become the league’s fastest player.
“I’m currently third at the moment,” said Ogbene, who joined Luton from Rotherham last summer.
“When I was younger, I was quite slim. So I spent a lot of time in the gym to build more muscle mass.
“I watched a lot of sprinting videos, and I’m a big Usain Bolt fan. I have two brothers who also perform track and field.
“I spent a lot of time with them learning how to run because to sprint, it is a skill that you have to learn. I know naturally we’re all able to run, but as a kid I always tried to be more efficient in how.
“I’ve watched the Olympic finals multiple times, just watching Usain Bolt. If I can perfect how I can run, and obviously added to my football skills, it does give me that extra one per cent.
“I’m hoping to (top third fastest player), maybe not now, maybe in the summer when the weather’s nice and my muscles are a bit warmer.”
The Premier League’s latest sprinting stats have Van de Ven at 37.38 km/h, Walker 37.31 and Ogbene 36.93, while seven of the all time top 10 speeds have been clocked this season.
But Bolt would still leave the Premier League’s speedsters trailing in his wake. His average speed in his record-breaking 100m run of 9.58secs was 37.58km/h with a top speed of 43.99km/h.
Even so, Republic of Ireland international Ogbene has made a fast start to life in the top flight and is convinced Luton can beat the drop.
Speaking to TNT Sports’ Sign Up: Into Football, a new show aimed at raising the profile of the deaf community and raising the visibility of British Sign Language, Ogbene added: “Playing in the Premier League was something I dreamed about.
“When Rob Edwards was the manager who gave me a phone call to come to Luton, it was a call I had to take.
“I feel like I’m playing better
than I expected and the team is doing better than we expected.
“We all come from different backgrounds. But we all have the same vision, the way the manager brought the players in, he brought hard-working players who have grafted to get to the top.
“We’ve been written off many times, and we’ve still come out and proved teams wrong, proved people wrong and that’s the kind of culture we have.
“We believe in ourselves. And I always said before that opinions can’t play the game for us. That’s what we believe here, so we play for ourselves and we fight for each other.”
Acclimatising to the Irish weather also proved something of a battle for Ogbene when he first arrived. “I was very young
when I left Nigeria with my family, I was about eight and a half,” he recalled.
“Nigeria is obviously quite tropical so there’s a lot of red soil, a lot of sandy roads compared to Ireland - very green, very cold so it was two different extremes.
“I went from a very hot tropical country, to a very cold country so it was quite different for me, especially as a child going to Ireland. I didn’t have many friends but as time grew, I made friends.
“The first thing that I did notice massively is coming off the plane – I remember the cold air just taking me. My little sister tried to run back into the plane!”