The Chef de Mission for Team Ghana at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Frederick Acheampong, says, the disqualification of the men’s relay team from the 4x100m finals came as a shock to the authorities.
Frederick Acheampong, who also doubles as an Executive Council member of the Ghana Football Association(GFA) gave an insight on how the incident happened.
“I wasn’t the only person surprised at our team’s disqualification. The handlers at Ghana Athletics were also set aback because this is something they have expertise in and have done for many years and is also their daily routine so it came as a shock to everyone. But then, in every human institution, there are errors bound to occur and we were just unfortunate to be punished”, he told Ohene-Bampoe Brenya on Happy Sports on Happy 98.9FM
He further went on to attribute the oversight on the part of authorities that led to the disqualification of the men’s relay team to excess workload on the officials at the Games.
“The Games were spread across five villages in Birmingham and London. So, monitoring of all the Games became a major challenge at some point during the competition because of the administrative and some other duties we had to perform.”
Team Ghana fielded Sean Safo-Antwi, Benjamin Azamati, Barnabas Aggerh and Sameenu who finished third in 39.05s and thus qualified for the final. However, the team were disqualified for not informing officials on changes made ahead of the race.
Joseph Paul Amoah was initially on the anchor leg.
However, the Ghanaian coaches decided to rest him for the 200m final event, but failed to inform race officials one hour to the race, as the rules require.
Ghana’s relay team was subsequently disqualified per World Athletics Rule TR 24.11. According to the rule, only athletes whose names are on the final confirmation form as starters can run during the competition.
By Ahashie Judeliver Eli