Father of world hurdle champion, Tobi Amusan, has explained the reason he did everything to stop her from going into sports.
Kehinde said he too used to be a footballer but no one or institution supported him, so he did not want his child to get stranded satisfying her passion.
Besides, Kehinde added, he wanted her to be focused on her academics.
In an interview with ‘The Punch’, he said:
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. When I said I wanted her to face her education, it was because we knew what sports in Nigeria was at that time and we didn’t know what she would gain from being an athlete or going after games, instead of facing her education. At that point, I didn’t know she had been going for training because each time I asked her mother about her whereabouts, her response was always ‘I’m sorry, I ought to have told you, she left for the church, and at that time she was part of the choir. Subsequently, when I was not too convinced, I decided to monitor her, and interestingly, I found out that she used to go to the stadium for training and I said ‘No, that is not my plan for you.’ I wanted her to be focused on education. You can’t do two things at the same time. It’s either you focus on education or you focus on sports, but as a father, I didn’t want her to go into sports.
“I told her, ‘Focus on what you said you wanted to study, which is medicine.’ At the end of it, when I got to know that she was more interested in sports than what I wanted her to do, I took two of her training kits and burnt them. I wanted to discourage her from going into sports. She screamed, ‘Ha, Daddy, you burnt my clothes.’ And I told her I wanted her to be focused on what I wanted her to be. But when people came and intervened; that I should allow her to continue focusing on her God-given talent, I said no problem. Since then, I gave her all the support I could and even encouraged her to go for training. Sincerely, it was hard to take that decision at that time, but that was how it all started. As a teacher with a meagre salary, we struggled to feed and pay school fees. It was not easy. We usually gathered whatever we had to support her.
“Her mother did a lot for her. Before I could help, her mother would have done it almost all the time. We did all we could to help her career in sports. While I was growing up, no one cheered me when I played football. We saved our pocket money to buy our trainers and jerseys. We could only afford second-hand clothes back then. That was why I did not want her to go through the struggles of putting in all her efforts and not getting rewards for it. In truth, I told her to shun athletics because it was very tough taking care of the family then. So, adding an extra burden made it more difficult.”
