By Patrick Omorodion
Immediate past Chairman of Edo State Sports Commission, Yusuf Ali has charged Nigerian Long Jump athletes to work harder if they hope to break his national record of 8.27 metres.
Ali who was speaking on Channels Television Sunday Sports. programme monitored in Lagos Sunday said the record which was also an African record at the time, can be broken if the athletes work harder.
“To break the record is achievable but the athletes will have to work harder. To be ranked among the top four in Long Jump at the time I did that shows that I really worked hard to achieve it”, he said in the telephone interview.
The record jump, it would be called, was achieved at the 1989 African championship held in Lagos and it stood as the African Record for eight years till it was later broken by Senegal’s Chiekh Toure in 1997 to 8.46m.
Ali’s 8.27m gold medal-winning leap at the National stadium in Lagos at the African Championships in 1989 was two centimetres better than the 8.25m African record set by
