2020 Paralympics: Bawumia wishes Ghanaian athletes well
Ghana’s contingent
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia sent his best wishes to Ghana’s Paralympic athletes as the Paralympic Games commence today in Tokyo, Japan.
The games will end on 5 September 2021.
Originally scheduled to take place between 25 August and 6 September 2020, both the Olympics and Paralympics were postponed to 2021 in March 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and is held largely behind closed doors with no public spectators permitted due to a state of emergency in the Tokyo region.
The Games will see the introduction of badminton and taekwondo to the Paralympic programme, replacing sailing and seven-a-side football.
Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has charged the Ghana Olympic Committee and all stakeholders to ensure that the successes chalked at the Tokyo Olympic Games will be a springboard towards greater achievements.
This, according to the President, will allow the country “to regain its place of pride in sports on the continent and in the world.”
With the 2022 Commonwealth games in Birmingham just around the corner, President Akufo-Addo charged the “Ministry of Youth and Sports and all stakeholders to put in the necessary measures to ensure that we improve on our performance over the Australia 2018 Commonwealth Games.”
The President made this known when the Ghana Olympic team at the 2020 Tokyo Games called on him on Friday, August 20, 2021, to present the historic bronze medal, the first time the nation has won a medal in the history of this Fourth Republic, to him at the Jubilee House in Accra.
Touting the country’s achievements at the Tokyo games, President Akufo-Addo said “despite being represented by 14 athletes, the individual performances you put up at the Tokyo Olympics have been one of the best in the nation’s history.”
“Our last medal was in 1992 when the Under-23 football team, the Black Meteors, won bronze at the Barcelona games. For the first time in 49 years, Ghana won a medal in boxing, with the last one won by Prince Amartey in the 1972 games in Munich”, he added.
Continuing he disclosed further that, “for the first time in 25 years, our 4 by 100 relay team qualified for the finals at the Olympics. Four national records were broken at the games, that’s Joseph Amoah in the 200 metres race, the 4 by 100 team in the semi-finals, Abeiku Jackson in the 100 meters freestyle race in swimming, and Christian Amoah in weightlifting.”
He indicated that, “out of the 52 countries in the Olympic Games, Ghana placed 10th on the African standings and for the first time ever in the history of the Olympic Games, a Ghanaian athlete, Samuel Takyi, was selected to represent Africa at the closing ceremony of the Olympics.”
Portraying a country that honours its heroes, the President noted that as a “show of modesty and our gratitude, and on the basis of your individual performances, I’m happy to announce that each member of the team will receive a reward of 5,000 Dollars.”
“The medalist Samuel Takyi will receive a car, 10,000 Dollars plus an additional 20,000 Dollars put in a Career Development Fund. Aside these, the total in bonuses for the team amounting to a total of 150,000 Dollars,” he concluded.
