Reigning World 100m hurdles champion and record holder, Nigeria’s Tobi Amusan, is set to commence training this morning after she arrived in Budapest, Hungary, yesterday ahead of her event, as the 19th World Athletics Championships begin today.
World Athletics cleared the 26-year-old Amusan of charges of three whereabouts failures on Thursday evening.
The Guardian learnt that an excited Amusan left her base in Atlanta, USA, at 11.30pm on Thursday night and arrived in Paris, France, yesterday morning. She landed in Budapest yesterday evening.
Two-time former President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), and now Vice President of the Nigeria Olympics Committee (NOC), Chief Solomon Ogba, confirmed to The Guardian yesterday morning that Team Nigeria had arranged a ‘special room’ for Amusan in the Athletes Games Village to enable her concentrate on her event, which comes up on Day 4, (Tuesday).
The clearance provides Amusan the opportunity to defend her World Championships title, after she successfully retained her Nigeria, African Championships, African Games, Commonwealth Games, and Diamond League titles.
A tribunal of three arbitrators absolved Amusan of two out of the three missed tests, after she argued that the tester had not made sufficient efforts to locate her.
Amusan has been training in the U.S., and throughout the process, she consistently maintained her innocence and stated that she is a clean athlete.
She even mentioned on her Facebook page last month, “I have faith that this will be resolved in my favour and that I will be competing at the World Championships in August.”
However, credit must be given to AFN President, Tonobok Okowa, Technical Director, Samuel Onikeku and Secretary General, Rita Mosinde for their foresight in ensuring that Amusan’s name was included on the Main list of athletes forwarded to World Athletics before the expiration of deadline.
