London 2012 saw Gambia’s first ever participation in Paralympic Games with two wheelchair athletes competing. The day after the closing ceremony, athlete Isatou Nyang, coach Faye Basirou and the Chef de Mission, Sulayman Colley visited Marlborough.
They were guests at a lunch given by Caroline and Chris Loveday whose daughter Lilli lives and works in the Gambia. She’s married to Gunjurian Kebba Jatta who has been working with the Gambian Paralympic Committee.
Travelling with the Gambians were three of those wonderful volunteers – the Games-Makers – still in theireye-catching official uniforms. Also present at the lunch were Marlborough Mayor Edwina Fogg and Nicholas Fogg.
Isatou Nyang, who is twenty-eight years old and was born with deformed legs, took part in the women’s T54 100 and 800 metre events. The other competitor was Demba Jarju, aged twenty-three. He is wheelchair-bound through polio and took part in the men’s T54 100 and 800 metre events.
Neither of them advanced from the first round. But Demba was in the same 800 metre heat as gold medallist David Weir and Sulayman Colley says Demba is very proud of that.
Also on the visit to Marlborough was Gambian journalist Fatoumata Saho. She has been covering the Paralympics for Gambia’s Today newspaper and the radio station City Limits. However, as she was the only Gambian journalist at London 2012, her reports have been used in many other newspapers.
LOCOG (the London 2012 organising committee) paid for the air fares and accommodation for the six member Gambian delegation. And the two athletes were only able to compete after their competition wheelchairs were donated by the Swiss Paralympic Committee.
The President of Gambia’s Paralympic Committee, Sulayman Colley, says they get nothing in the way of funding from the Gambia government to support para sports. They struggle to get the proper equipment – and secondhand equipment is gratefully received.
Sulayman Colley, who is also wheelchair-bound, told Marlborough News Online that the great challenge facing them when they get home is that lack of funding. The private sector in Gambia is small and raising money is never easy, so they try to interest people outside the Gambia. Sulayman Colley can be contacted at paralympicgambia.weebly.com
Sulayman’s committee now have four basketball teams in great Banjul. Isatou, who’s better known as Ida, plays for one of the teams – she’s its only woman player.
The committee have organised para sports clubs in each of the country’s seven regions – and they been able to send ten wheelchairs to each region. The problem now is keeping them properly maintained.
Ida has really enjoyed being in London for the Paralympics and hopes very much to have improved enough to come back in 2014 for the para sport events at Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games. And beyond that, of course, there’s Rio 2016’s Paralympics.
