24th April, 2015
Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos will be agog today as the maiden Lagos Athletics Relays Championship hold between today and tomorrow with over N8m at stake at the two-day tournament.
Over 50 schools in Lagos as well as states such as Delta, Kwara, Ogun, Ondo including para-military clubs like Nigeria Custom Service (NCS) and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) will be part of the competition.
According to the organisers, the championship is one of the series of tournaments under the Lagos International Sports Classics, which has hosted and still hosting tournaments in table tennis, badminton, taekwondo, swimming, golf among others.
In all, nine events will be competed for in the junior and senior categories with the grand finale holding tomorrow at the same venue.
According to the chairman, Lagos State Athletics Association, Olatunde Makanju, the competition is aimed at igniting the interest of students in athletes, adding that the maiden edition would provide avenue for the state to be hosting the best legs across the globe.
“From our observation, it has been discovered that athletics is going down in schools and we feel staging this kind of event would help to ignite the interest of the students to embrace the sport. Aside this, we are hoping that the tournament will become a world class event with the best athletes across the world coming to Lagos to compete in the prize-money competition. For us in Lagos, we are always setting the pace and we hope that this maiden edition will be a springboard for the sport to win more disciples and have more young people competing,” Makanju said.