Amponsah runs historic 27:47.93 in 10,000m, shows West Africa can rival East Africans in distance events

Ghana’s William Amponsah ran a blistering 27:47.93 lifetime best, a new NCAA Division II record and Ghana record to make history as the first West African to break 28 minutes in the 10,000m event.

The 25-year-old West Texas A&M student-athlete’s performance is a wakeup call to West Africans that long-distance events are not the exclusive preserve of the East, North and South Africans.

The Ghanaian came close to making this history last year when he ran 28:00.09 at the Cougar Athletic Stadium in Azusa, California.

A year and a few days later and at the same stadium, Amponsah made history with his and West Africa’s first sub-28 minutes run in the event.

Nigerian officials can learn from this and make concrete efforts to develop distance running this time around after failing to take advantage of some world class performances by a few Nigerians in the middle and long distances in the 1990s.

In 1990, Abbas Muhammed ran 2:16:06 in the full marathon, a world class standard at the time while two years later, Ado Maude equally ran a time (1:45.91) that was in the world class in ranking.

Since then, many of Nigeria’s marathoners have been struggling to break 2:20 while it was only recently that Edose Ibadin broke Maude’s Nigeria record and ran a sub-1:45 in the two full laps event.

But unfortunately, the world, especially the east Africans have raised the bar to runs inside 1:44 and 1:43.

In the 1500m, Maude’s 3:42.85 lifetime best was near world class and still subsists as the fastest time ever run by a Nigerian.

The best time any Nigerian has achieved in the 10,000m was the hand-timed 29:04.5 Itsifamus Choolon ran way back in June 1998.

Amponsah has shown that with the right support, West Africa could rise as a new force in global athletics.