As the curtain closes on the 6th Islamic Solidarity Games in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Friday with a spectacular closing ceremony, Nigerian athletes head home after winning an impressive 30 medals to end the year on an outstanding note for Nigerian sports.
Team Nigeria ended the Games with 11 Gold medals , 12 silver and 7 bronze medals to record Nigeria’s best ever performance in the history of the Solidarity Games.
The National Sports Commission’s new strategy of attending international competitions with only athletes with podium prospects have already started paying off.
The NSC featured only seven sports at the Games namely Taekwondo, Boxing, Athletics, Wrestling, Weightlifting, Para-Powerlifting and Para athletics and Nigeria won medals in all the Sports.
And after featuring 32 athletes at the Games, Nigeria almost equates that number with its total number of medals won – 30 medals.
Nigeria won its highest number of medals from Weightlifting with 6 Gold , 4 silver and 3 bronze medals while athletics provided the second highest number of medals with 2 Gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze medals.
Wrestling produced 2 Gold and 2 silver medals while Power powerlifting produced 1, boxing 1 silver, Para Athletics 1 silver and Taekwondo 1 bronze to earn Nigeria its medal total of 30.
Director General of the NSC, Hon Bukola Olopade said while the Commission is very happy with the outing in Riyadh, it will be very important to build on it ahead of next year’s Commonwealth Games and future international competitions.
” We will surely see how we will step up the sustainability strategies that gave us these results in Riyadh which is why we will increase our collaborations and support for the various Sports Federations to deliver on both the Sports economy and the podium mandate given to us by Mr President”.
