September 30, 2021
By Mohamed Abu Conteh
The National Olympic Committee of Sierra Leone has on Monday 27th September 2021 met with Presidents of sporting Associations and Pressmen at the Olympia Africa Goodrich.
According to the President of the national Olympic Committee of Sierra Leone Dr. Patrick Coker the NOC is going to be fully involved in the selection of Athletes this time around because the Committee wants the entire process to be transparent this time around.
“What happened the last time is bad, we don’t want to find ourselves like what happen the last”, the President noted.
“NOC is not going to select Athletes, but we are going to be involved in the selection of Athletes for transparency from the Association and the Chief de Mission Unisa Deen Karbgo,”the President said.
He affirmed that the end of the year 2022 will be the last term of the current National Olympic Committee of Sierra Leone; he is there for urging all association to put their house in order before the Elections.
The Chief de Mission Unisa Deen Karbgo in updating association Presidents and Pressmen he said because of the lack of non-funding from top institutions and cooperate houses there will always be struggle to qualify for the games because associations don’t have resources as they require funding to go for the qualifiers.
He affirmed that the International Olympic Committee has been supportive to Associations prior to the games they help five associations Athletes with Scholarship to aid more with professional skills in their respective Sports.
He added that next Commonwealth games will take place in July 2022 and the qualifications will kick start soon and letters will soon be dispatched to Association Presidents to get their Athletes prepared ahead of the qualifiers.
He furthered that next year’s Commonwealth games will be a limited number of ( 22) and it is not going to be like the usually process, as according to him athletes will have to go through a qualifications process, because the Organizing Committee have introduce new Sports in the Commonwealth games, Sports like, Cricket T 20, 3×3 Basketball, and many more.
The Secretary General of the National Olympic Committee Joseph Nyande while making his statement he asked associations to develop a project plan that they want to embark on in the next four years because the next Olympic games will take place in France 2024 and all associations within the National Olympic Committee need to work on a Quadrant plan.
He added that there are two formats of qualifications for the Commonwealth games, there are Associations that are normally chosen to part take in the games because of their past records of being in the games while others are to go through a qualifications process.
He urged Associations to contact their international federation to know what measures have been put in place towards the qualifications.
He furthered that all associations should start to focus on youth games because next year the competitions will kick start, because most of the associations don’t have a strategic plan for youth Sports.
“In most cases we have problems with Associations because of their poor relationship with their international federation,” he revealed.
He urged the associations under the umbrella of NOC to start to train young Athletes for them to have an area for talent identification that will be of good use to represent the Country in future competitions.
The National Olympic Committee will on the 23rd October 2021 brace up to receive the Queen Baton from England on a tour to Africa and it’s going to be a two days events.
The President said they will continue to meet with their membership to map out plans for a successful delegation to Birmingham next year 2022.