Paris 2024 Winter Olympics: NCF President Explains Reason For The Team's Defeat In Finland

Paris 2024 Winter Olympics: NCF President Explains Reason For The Team's Defeat In Finland

Sampson Adedeji

The President of Nigeria Curler Federation Mr Daniel Damola has explained the reason Team Nigeria failed to live up to expectations in Finland, BSNSports.com.ng has gathered.

The team recorded back-to-back losses in their games against Latvia, Austria, Spain and then Italy which led them not to qualify for the event in 2024.

Daniel said lack of experience remains their main issue and the qualifier is also an eye-opener for the team.

He went ahead to praise the team despite losing and further emphasised that they will do better in future.

“When the team played against Latvia, they lost, 0-24, being their first experience because they only had two days to train.

“You can imagine kids that are coming from sub-Saharan Africa that have not been on the ice before getting on the ice, having less than 48 hours of training on how to slide, how to move from the arc, how to deliver a stone, how to play stones and then how to sweep at the same time within the 24-48 hours window to train.

“I think it speaks volumes that these kids have something in them.

“They are the future of curling, watch out for them. You will see that these kids will be world-beaters because I think they played so well. 

"The only thing that worked against them is the placement of stone because of their lack of experience and this is their first time stepping on the ice.

“I think we can do better in our subsequent games. I believe we will do better because the first time they played, they won five against us in the first innings and second innings. It was six and then they now dropped to 3,4,2 and so on.

“They are picking up and we believe they will do better because they were lacking some technicalities being their first time on ice. 

" And then to play an international championship of that magnitude, they also played against older kids that have gotten the experience of maybe 5,6,10 years ahead of them. They did well.” NCF President told Guardian correspondent.