Back then in my days I was the Lionel Messi of 'Monkey post', there was even a time i went ahead to score a fantastic header from my own cross.lol But when Tjay (my first ever coach) came into the picture, reality began to set in.. I found out that i wasnt even half as good as Gambo Mohammed.
The door on that career path closes early and never opens again, unless, of course, you grow up to be disgustingly rich and powerful.
Because professional sports have never shied from choosing money over dignity, it's entirely possible to grease your awkward slide into professional athletics with Billions of Naira ...
From time to time, Sportunes will be taking you back memory lane on all the people that forcefully came to our sports, saw our sports and destroyed our sports.
Following Al-Saadi Gaddafi's failed plan to destroy soccer (HERE) is:
Emperor Nero Winning Every Event in the Olympics
Emperor Nero of Rome is the 'most successful athlete in the history of Olympics'
The Romans regarded Greek culture as being too dead and preferred their own more robust version of games and spectacles; copious amounts of blood on the sand ensured the success of any sporting event.
The Emperor fancied himself as too cultured and artistic to enjoy such barbaric spectacles, He replaced the blood sports with foot races, singing and poetry contests, winning all the events for which he entered. However this did not go down well with the paying customers in Rome, so Nero decided to go on a tour of Greece where the finer things were appreciated.
He returned to Rome, a tired but happy Emperor, with 1800 prizes. Medals were not introduced till 1904 or Nero would have made Micheal Phelps look pretty silly with his meager 22. Nero won them by being a tyrannical emperor who threatened the lives of all the competitors he couldn't bribe.
To start, he ordered that the entire Olympics be postponed by two years because he had to take care of a few loose ends such as murdering his mother, castrating his former favourite slave boy and crucifying a few fans who didn't applaud loudly enough at his last poetry recital.
He finally set out for Greece to attend and compete in the 67 AD Olympic Games. Above all other sports, Emperor Nero loved chariot-racing, so much that he fixed the Olympic games to ensure that he could not only compete among the best in the world but also win. At the games he showed up to the event with 10 horses. For anyone who's not a chariot racing enthusiast, the race is run with four horses.
He bribed other riders to drop out, and even with a huge advantage, he still fell in the middle of the race and was unable to finish. he was still proclaimed the winner on the grounds that he would have won had he been able to complete the race, but really which official loves to be thrown to the lions den? After his death the next year, his name was expunged from the victor list
But Nero wasn't done. He figured as long as he was there, he might as well win every other event, too. He demanded that a musical competition be introduced, specifically so he could win that and to be clear, Nero wasn't a great musician. His performances were so staggeringly bad that people would literally pretend to be dead so that he would stop.
Finally, he ordered the statues of previous winners be torn down and hurled into the public toilets. All told, he managed to cheapen the most sacred sporting event in history until it was nothing more than a children's game where he gets to make up the rules as he goes.
Emperor Nero came, saw and destroyed the Ancient Olympic games.
I remember coach Tjay!!!!
ReplyDeleteKagba janeti days. Good ol' times