21st NSF: We’ll focus more on sports of strengths to achieve success — Ondo Sports Council

THE Ondo State Sports council, has said it will continue to focus more on sports where it has comparative advantages in order to achieve a successful outing at the forthcoming 21st edition of the National Sports Festival tagged “asaba 2022”.

Henry Babatunde, the general Manager of the council, who stated this on Sunday while speaking with journalists in akure, explained that the state was going to the competition with 129 athletes and would participate in 20 sports.

according to him, some of the sports which the state had comparative advantage include; Wrestling, Table Tennis, Judo, Swimming and Taekwondo.

Babatunde, however, said the state was not just going to the festival for fun sake, but with strategy and plan to ensure the state improved on the performance of last edition on the medal’s table.

He said, “We are looking at the areas of our strengths, we are looking at the Wrestling, Table Tennis, Judo, Kick-boxing, Taekwondo, Swimming. We are very hopeful at this time that we are going to do well.

“We are going with 20 sports with 129 athletes and what we have now is more than what we had in the last festival. So this time around, Ondo state is very much hopeful that we are going to do well at the games.”

The general manager also boasted that the state would not win anything less than eight gold medals in the game of swimming to boost the state chances ending well on the medal’s table by the end of the sports festival.

“When i came on board we met a bad swimming pool and that has always demoralised our swimmers but to the glory of god now, we have been able to bring back the swimming pool.

“We are very hopeful that anything that has to do with aquatic this time around we are going to have medals and i can beat my chest that we cannot have less than 8 gold in aquatic sport as far as this games is concern,” he said.