We must reverse baton changeover ‘curse’ in athletics

The World’s most popular multi-sports event, the Olympics games, branded this year ‘Paris 2024’, came to a close on Sunday at the Stade de France, after 19 days of thrills and excitement.

We are not too much surprised that Team Ghana came home empty-handed in the events we participated in.

Of course, we cannot reap where we have not sown, but suf­fice it to commend our team for their participation and competing with the best in the world.

We at the Ghanaian Times cannot be happy with the team’s performance; our disappointment stems from the comedy of errors in the high-profile athletic events, especially in the relay race.

Ghana have been consistent in the sprint and 4×100 metres events at the Olympics Games and other international multi-sports events, and gained appre­ciable level of experience and inspirations.

So, the whole nation was hopeful that the relay team at the Paris 2024 would make the country proud by mounting the podium to collect a medal, after the country’s poor performance in the boxing, swimming and the female high jump events.

But, our history of baton exchange mishap reared its ugly head in the team again.

The relay quartet of Abdul-Ra­sheed Saminu, Benjamin Azamati, Ibrahim Fuseini and Joseph Paul Amoah put up a strong show at the semifinals, crossing the line in the 4×100 metres at 38.62 seconds in the sixth position, but was disqualified for exchanging the baton outside the designated exchange zone.

The baton exchange delay slowed the quartet’s momentum, and with that incident, the coun­try’s last hope of winning a medal came crushing and ended the dream of another eventful games.

In athletics, baton changeover is very crucial because it is vital in maintaining speed and momen­tum in the race, so the rules are strictly adhered to, especially with the application of technology.

We recall that at the 1996 At­lanta Olympic Games, our relay quartet was disqualified for baton exchange error.

We suffered similar baton ex­change errors at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Games, which actually took place in 2021 due to the dis­ruption of events by COVID-19, the World Athletic Championship in 2021, and the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022.

Sadly, back home in Ghana in March, during the 13th Afri­ca Games at the University of Ghana Stadium, Accra, a baton exchange hitch between the third leg Solomon Hammond and the anchor, Joseph Paul Amoah, robbed our quartet of gold med­al, which Nigeria eventually won in the finals of the 4×100 relay.

We at the Ghanaian Times are extremely worried over this trend of affairs in our athletics.

We believe it is time we over­came what appears to be baton changeover ‘curse’.

Ghanaian teams are no novices in track and field events, and we wonder why this issue of baton exchange keeps recurring anytime they participate in high-profile sports.

The history of baton exchange errors by our 4×100 relay teams is embarrassing; it appears the teams have not been learning lessons from previous failures, to improve upon that crucial seg­ment of relay race in subsequent events.

Be that as it may, we still have confidence in our athletes to get over this difficulty, through improved training in baton ex­change techniques and commu­nications.

We expect that in subsequent outings at such major athletics, the country’s teams will have eradicated their nemesis, to have a seamless baton changeover in relay race.