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Team Nigeria Aims High as 8th African Arm Wrestling Championship

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The chief coach of the Team Nigeria arm wrestling squad, Femi Akinsanya, has vowed that the Nigerian team would spring surprises at the 8th Africa Arm Wrestling Championship holding in Lagos.

The competition begins on Wednesday at the Molade Okoya Thomas Indoor Sports Hall of Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

Arm wrestling involves two participants. Each places one arm on a surface with their elbows bent and touching the surface, and they grip each other’s hand. The goal is to pin the other’s arm onto the surface, the winner’s arm over the loser’s arm

Akinsanya, who is ably assisted by Ogenna Nnmezu popularly called ‘Mr. Nature,’ stated that, Team Nigeria has been preparing for the championship months ago with series of national of championships hosted in Nigeria by the  Nigeria Arm Wrestling Federation.

“We have the athletes with the right character to win the overall title of the African Championship in the male category; our ladies are also not bad.

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“We know our strongest challengers would be coming from Egypt, Cameroon, Mali and Ghana, but we are equal to the task.

“We shall be presenting 20 athletes to launch the country into prominence in the African continent. We have been to two World Championships and have garnered enough exposure to take the lead in Africa.”

The 8th African Arm Wrestling Championship begins with the Technical Meeting and the African Congress where far reaching decisions about the sport in the continent will be discussed.

The main competition commences on Thursday with weighing of athletes and the Referees Seminar. The championship will officially be declared opened on Friday June 30 by the president of the arm wrestling Federation of Africa, Egyptian, Zain El abedin Aly, who is already in Lagos, Nigeria for the event.

The competition proper will start with the Left and Right Arm challenges.

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The closing ceremony on Saturday would witness celebrity arm wrestling contests where top sports administrators and other members of the public would take to the floor in demonstration events.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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