Media Attaché of Ghana’s contingent at the 2024 Olympics, Benjamin William Graham, says he doesn’t believe that replacing Isaac Botsio with Abdul-Rasheed Saminu affected the team’s disappointing performance.
He said this in an exclusive interview with Citi Sports after Ghana finished sixth in Heat 2 of the Men’s 4×100 Relay Team with a time of 38.62 seconds but got disqualified due to a lane infraction. (Click highlighted text to read full story)
The baton change between Abdul-Rasheed Saminu and Benjamin Azamati was far from pretty leading to the infraction. Ghana qualified to compete in the 2024 Olympics semis with Azamati, Ibrahim Fuseini, Isaac Botsio and Joseph Paul Amoah.
For the August 8 heat, Saminu, who run 10.05 seconds in the Men’s 100 Metres, replaced Botsio but Graham denies the swap affected the team’s performance.
“Saminu in the national team camp is the fastest athlete currently… and you want to throw in your best athletes in the 4×100 Metres.”
“Obviously this was going to be our best team. It had nothing to do with whether Botsio was going to change anything, it was making sure that your best team was competing for Ghana at that stage and I think that we presented the best team. Unfortunately, the execution of the baton passing didn’t go as planned.”
Ghana’s campaign in the 2024 Olympics has officially come to an end with the disqualification of the Men’s Relay Team following similar disappointments in other events.
