Sports
Ghana will be in Los Angeles
Ghana is to be represented in the Los Angeles Summer Olympics from July 28th to August 12th by a token team of 20, made up of competitors and officials.The competitors will compete in athletics and boxing. Mr Zac Bentum, Chairman of the National Olympic Games Appeal Fund Committee announced this is Accra. He said, however, that a colossal amount of 5.6 million cedis would be needed to trans- port, equip, board and lodge the team.
Mr Bentum was launching an appeal for funds at a film show organized at the State House. The PNDC government has announced that it will not be able to meet this giant expenditure.
"The National Olympic Committee (NOC) has therefore accepted this challenge and to Los Angeles we must go" he stressed.
Correspondence on contributions to the fund may be addressed to the Chairman, National Olympic Games Appeal fund, Box 1272, Accra, the Accra Sports Stadium or to the offices of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Boxing contest postponed The 36th World Military boxing championships due to open in Uganda on April 16th have been postponed until May 5th.
The postponement was made at the request of the Brussels-based International Military Games Council. So far ten countries have said they will take part in the games to be held in Jinja, 50 miles (80 Km) east of Kampala.
They are Ivory Coast, West Germany, Austria, Tunisia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Entries for chess contest
The Nigeria Chess Federation (NCF) has called for entries for this year's International Open Chess Champion- ships.Class 'B' for provisionally rated and New national records set unrated players and Class 'C' for ladies.
The entries which are open to all Association. nationals in and outside Nigeria, are to reach the NCF Secretary on or before April 16th, at 43 Ogunlana Drive, Surulere, Lagos.
In a statement, the NCF said the championships which come up at the sports hall of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos from April 90th-23rd, would be staged in three categories. These are class 'A' for rated players;
Warm-up fights for champion
The World Light heavy-weight wrestling champion, Mike Bamidela of Nigeria will soon leave Nigeria for warm-up fights in preparation for his championship defence in August and November this year. According to the New Nigerian, Mike Bamidela who started his training programme in February had already stepped up his training in Nigeria and will move to Liverpool, Slough and Glasgow for various warm-up fights.He is expected to have a fight in London in August before meeting Pat Barrett, the World Lightheavy-weight No 1 contender in November.
Mike Bamidele, is also the National Wrestling coach who is preparing wrestlers for the Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Suspension of referees
Four football referees who were found guilty by the Nigeria Referees Association for various offences have been suspended. They are from Benue, Cross River, Rivers and the Sokoto State.According to Mr Linus Mba the secretary of the association of referees, the referee from Benue State was found guilty of collusion with local football officials and therefore suspended for one year.
Also suspended for one year is the River State referee whose bad officiating in a football match resulted in serious violence.
The Cross River and the Sokoto referees were suspended indefinitely for what the association considers as very serious misconduct.
Mr Mba explained that the names of the affected referees have been communicated to the Nigeria Football
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Nigeria Referees Association (NRA), Alhaji R.O. Oyeyemi has called on all football referees participating in the 1984 national competitions to be fair and firm.
It is neither the duty nor the responsibility of the officiating referees to decide who wins a particular match, he said.
Four national records were set at the 13th Annual Athletics Competition of the Cross River Police command, in Calabar.
C. Ekaebe won the 400 metres in 49.85 seconds to erase the former record of 50.8 seconds, while S Enoyo bettered his former record of 4 minutes 43.7 seconds in the 1,500 metres when he clocked 4 minutes 27.75 seconds.
In the Long Jump event, E. Otudor jumped 6.62 metres to erase the former record of 6.04 metres while B. Umoh finished the 100 metres (women) in 13.11 seconds to cancel the former record of 13.70 seconds.
Patterson tours Africa
Former world heavyweight boxing champion, Floyd Patterson, is to visit a number of African states this month.Patterson, who became the world heavyweight champion in 1956 at the age of 21, is paying the visit to encourage African boxers who will compete in the next July Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, United States.
The former champion's visit is being sponsored by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and forms part of the agency's pre-Olympic training and coaching camps programme for Africa..
OAU opposes tour
The OAU has expressed its dismay and grave concern at the proposed tour of South Africa by the English Rugby Union and has appealed to the British government and the Rugby Football Union to dissuade the team from undertaking the tour. In a speech of March 31st, President Moi was also reported by Nairobi radio as saying "he wondered why Britain, which is said to be the seat of democracy, would undertake this trip.The chairman of SANROC (South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee) had described the decision as scandalous and intimated that a campaign would now be started to have England expelled from the Commonwealth Games. The new chairman of the UN special committee on aparthied, Joseph Garba of Nigeria, has strongly condemned the decision while the chairman of the Association of African National Olympic Committees had described the decision as regrettable.
