Dr. Olusegun Odegbami has continued his personal chronicle of the 22nd National Sports Festival, Gateway Games 2024, offering insight into the unfolding experience on Day Three of the competition.
In a post, Odegbami described the day as a moment of quiet observation and deeper appreciation for the atmosphere surrounding the Games.
He wrote:
Gateway Games – through my eyes
MY DAILY DIARY – life in the Arena!
DAY THREE
Sports competitions have started. The medals’ count has begun. Ogun State is not hosting to win…at any cost. The tables state so. It is winning in organisation. The venues are filling up. The athletes are having fun.
Aramide, a sister visiting from Paris, calls me up and ‘complains’ that little of the Festival is being felt in Abeokuta. She has gone round and the town is not buzzing. There are no visitors or tourists, she says.
I know what she is talking about. She is getting it wrong. She is comparing Nigeria’s local ‘Olympics’ to the Paris Olympics of 2024.
As a resident of Paris, she was a part of that special experience last year when the city hosted the rest of the world to a Games considered one of the best ever. Expecting similar ambience here is like comparing the mole hill in Wasimi to Mount Everest in the Himalayas.
Gateway Games 2024 is not that kind of ‘Olympics’. Both events may be sports, with thousands of participants, but that’s where their commonality ends. One is a showcase of the best athletes on the planet, the other a humble platform to discover unknown, budding, local talents. At the Gateway Games, there is no pent up display of extreme emotions as one watches young athletes cutting their teeth at moderate level competition.
Outside the main events and venues, a social/commercial culture usually develops and fuels an eco-system at every sports festival. It is the size that various. In the particular instance of the ongoing Games, that size is enormous, with a temporary but authentic ‘sports city’ evolving around and at the back of the MKO Abiola Sports Arena in Abeokuta.
You need to go there at any time of the day or night to see the unbelievable spectacle.
For three nights in a row I have returned there with friends to view this cauldron of human traffic, of trading, of quaffing and feasting. It is one humongous party, like ‘Woodstock music festival’ of 1969 in the USA.
I have advised Aramide to visit ‘the Arena’ and experience the other side of the Gateway Games at night!
Day Three is quiet for me.
I have no car for the day.
I do very little. Even the advertised Tricycle is not ready yet to make a grand entry.
So, I spend the day in the studios of Eagle7 Sports Radio 103.7 FM preparing for the first night of entertainment at the Eagle7 Bamboo Garden. It is the same night of the Europa League final match.
For those in Abeokuta and parts of Lagos and Ogun States, Eagle7 is the must-listen-to radio station. It offers the most comprehensive reportage of the Gateway Games on terrestrial radio as well as online. The station does some of the presenting and analysis from the Bamboo Garden in a unique interaction with the public.
The festival machine is now grinding on. The Games are progressing quietly and quickly, the pressures at the start dissipating slowly like a leaking valve, with all lapses buried in the thrills of a victory, or the agony of a loss.
ODEGBAMI’S DIARY OF SPORTS FESTIVAL
