Sprint hurdler, Oluwatobi Amusan, who became Nigeria’s first World Champion to win a gold medal and a world record of 12.12secs at the Oregon 2022 in the USA revealed that her father doesn’t support her doing athletics.
VIDEO: Tobi Amusan’s Father Reveals Reason He Didn’t Support Her Athletic Career
Speaking with BBC Sport SAfrica she said, “My parents are both teachers, they are strict disciplinarians, ”
“When you grow up in such a family, they feel you should focus on school. And being a female, they think you are going to go astray, lose focus and all of that.
“But because my mum saw what I didn’t see [in] myself, she felt she could give me a chance. And she kept telling me not to disappoint her.
“My mum would tell my dad I was going to church while I sneaked to practice or tell him I was going to a school debate while I went to out-of-state competition. That’s where it all started.
“My dad got really mad one time when he found out [I was running]. He burnt all my training gear and told my mum that’s the last time he wanted to see me in a stadium,” Amusan said.
However, in an interview with JOHNNY EDWARD, Kehinde Amusan, Tobi’s father, agreed that he never supported the athlete in the early stages.
He said,
“I felt so much pride watching her coast to victory. You know, as a parent, when you see your children succeeding, it makes you delighted, given the hard work and efforts put into raising them.
“I believe it was just the mercy of God, because as a parent when you have a child who succeeds, you will give all the glory back to God. We are so overwhelmed and we want to thank everyone both here and abroad that supported her in attaining this great feat.
I celebrated her victory in my own little way. You know how Nigerians are, so many family friends, and neighbors came around that early morning to join us in the celebration.
We prayed, sang, and gave all the glory to Almighty God. Our well-wishers also came around to share in our joy.
Answering the question if he supported her doing sport or tried to stop her he said,
In the beginning, I didn’t really support her, though her mother took to sports during her school days. She was an athlete as well, while I’m a football lover.
I played football, but I think she took after the interest we had in sports, particularly athletics, due to her mother’s interest.
You know, parents will always want their children to stay focused on education because of the manner in which sports are administered in Nigeria.
With that in mind, we initially didn’t support her because we believed someone who was good in the sciences should become either a doctor or a nurse and not a sportsperson.
But along the line, when some people saw that she had talent, they took interest in her. In the end, we supported her and as God would have it when we saw that she had the talent, as given to her by God, we decided to leave it all to God, and now, here is the success story.
Reacting to Tobi’s claim of him burning her sports gear in a bid to discourage her from sports 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 were 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 meager 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.
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