Sprint coach, Elorm Amenakpor and jump coach, Dr. Andrew Owusu, will be Ghana’s coaches for the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
This will be Elorm’s second World Athletics stint after Oregon 2022, while Dr. Owusu will be attending his first as Ghana’s coach.
But he was at the Rio Olympics in 2016 as one of three coaches for the Ghana Olympic track-and-field team, and also at Tokyo 2021.
Owusu, a former long and triple jumps athlete, will replace Christian Nsiah for this year’s championships and will work with Ghana’s jump athletes.
Deborah Acquah’s confirmation for this year’s championships came after Birmingham 2022, while Abigail Kwarteng’s qualification is expected to be confirmed by World Athletics after closure of the qualification window.
James Dadzie, after running a then 2023 season record of 19.79s in the men’s 200m in April, has also qualified after meeting the qualifying standard.
He also nearly achieved the 10.00s mark for the 100m event – running 9.98s, but with a wind reading of 3.2m/s.
However, Ghana’s fastest man, Benjamin Azamati, will be in Budapest for the event after qualifying via his world ranking.
He’s also expected to line up for Ghana in the men’s 4x100m relay.
Joy Sports sources have said there are plans to camp the 4x100m relay team and other qualified athletes in France – from July – ahead of the August 19 start date.
The men’s 4x100m relay team’s automatic qualification was confirmed in November 2022.
Days later the Ghana Athletics told Joy Sports it was worried about how to prepare the quartet for Budapest.
However, it seems fears have been allayed with the Ministry of Youth and Sports committing to explore ways to support a month-long preparation in France.