Nigeria’s female basketball national team, D’Tigress star, Evelyn Akhator has reflected on the delay coronavirus pandemic has caused to the squad’s Olympic Games’ build-up programme, and reasoned that they will now have to begin their preparations from scratch, megasportsarena.com reports.
Although she acknowledged that the postponement of this year’s Games, on account of the deadly respiratory disease all across the world means D’Tigress have more time to prepare for the competition in Tokyo, Japan, Akhator stressed that they now have to start from square one.
She is, however, also picking positives from the postponement of Tokyo 2020 till next year July, as the Kentucky of USA product doubted if D’Tigress would have been ready to contend with the world’s best teams had International Olympics Committee (IOC) not agreed with the host nation to call off the Games that had initially been billed for July 24.
With the Olympics now on hold till next year, due to the scare and worry about COVID-19 that is rolling across the world, Akhator told Brila FM that the postponement has its pros and cons, as a lot of the Nigerian players were already out of shape, and would have needed thorough drilling to be ready for action, but they will now have to work even harder after the current pandemic.
Akhator added: “The thing was in as much as we are very excited to participate in the Olympic games, let’s say the COVID-19 plague ends this month we are still not ready, we see not ready to play because we are not in basketball shape.
“It wouldn’t be logical to even come out of such pandemic to start playing and practicing as everyone will have to start from square one afresh. We can’t just come back and start practicing immediately we have to start from square one and start practicing.”
