SPORT
Proud new Australian sprinter is finally cleared for take-off
Jenny McAsey
February 11, 2006
FOR the past five years, Ambrose Ezenwa has been the invisible man of Australian sprinting.
Whenever the rivalry among Australia’s fastest men was hyped, it was about Pat versus Matt or the arrival of Josh the Boss on to the sprint scene.
Sometimes Nigerian-born Ezenwa beat his opponents but it didn’t count. They could earn an Australian singlet and he couldn’t.
But when Patrick Johnson, Joshua Ross, Matt Shirvington, Daniel Batman and rising young sprinter Adam Miller lined up at the Commonwealth Games selection trials in Sydney last week, they knew Ezenwa could no longer be ignored.
Shortly before the trials, on Australia Day, Ezenwa learned he had been given clearance by Nigeria and international athletics bodies to compete for his adopted country.
At last the 28-year-old, who came to Australia with the Nigerian Olympic team in 2000 and stayed, was on equal terms with his competitors. He had something real to run for.
“For so long I had been training but sometimes I didn’t feel like getting out of bed because I wasn’t eligible to be selected for teams. Now I feel like I have something to chase,” Ezenwa said.
He gate-crashed his way on to the Australian Commonwealth Games team by finishing in the top three in both the 100m and 200m.
In the 100m he was just shaded by Ross but beat national record holder Johnson, as well as Miller and Shirvington. In the 200m he was third behind Johnson and Batman, and again beat fourth-placed Miller to a Commonwealth Games sprint berth.
“Some people might think it is not fair and say I have pushed an Australian out of the team but I am Australian and I want to do my best for my new country,” said Ezenwa, a geology graduate who is doing temporary project work at the Australian Museum.
"I’ve shed a lot of tears waiting for this moment to come. It helped me to lift and run fast to get onto the team.
“The other sprinters have been good friends and supportive, always asking when I could run for Australia. They are patriotic and want a good result for the country.”
Ezenwa will walk on to the MCG alongside another foreign-born athlete, 2000 Olympic 5000m silver medallist, Sonia O’Sullivan, who has Irish and Australian citizenship.
O’Sullivan has also been accused of pushing others out. But no-one else qualified and O’Sullivan, 36, would have stepped aside if she had been holding a young runner back.
“For the past 10 years I have spent nearly half my life here,” said O’Sullivan, who has two children with her Australian partner, distance coach Nic Bideau.
Their oldest daughter, Ciara, is at primary school in Melbourne, and O’Sullivan has celebrity status there, invited to talk to the kids about her selection.
“My commitment to run for Australia in the Commonwealth Games is 100 per cent,” O’Sullivan said.
“There are plenty of people in Australia who were not born here but have done a lot to benefit the country. I feel over the past 10 years I have helped Australian distance running a lot. When I first came here the standard wasn’t great, and I remember I paced Lisa Ondieki to run an Australian 5000m record. I wanted to help out.”
Because of unique Commonwealth Games rules, O’Sullivan will still be eligible to run for Ireland and may do so later this year at the European championships.
Ezenwa never wants to compete for Nigeria again and says he will be so happy when he competes in the Australian colours.
He was chosen to run for his native country at the Sydney 2000 Olympics but left off the team at the last minute.
“There is a lot of politics that I don’t like in Nigerian athletics. They don’t have a good system to look after their athletes. And there is a shortage of employment so it is hard to make opportunities for yourself,” Ezenwa said.
“I made a decision I wanted to go out and see the world and I picked Australia as a place I would love to live in. People are very welcoming.”
But it wasn’t simple and there were five lost years in his sprinting career as his application for Australian residency and citizenship dragged on.
He was caught between two countries, and in 2004, fearful he would never fulfill his Olympic dream, he went back to Nigeria to try out for their team to Athens.
He was selected in the sprint relay but again politics intervened and he didn’t run.
Now he sees his omission as a blessing. He was granted citizenship last April and cleared the last hurdle when Athletics Australia told him the Nigerian federation had released any hold over him.
He took to the track at the A-Series meet in Canberra that same day and ran a 100m personal best of 10.18sec to celebrate.
“Nigeria has 140 million people and I had told them there were a lot of runners who could take my place,” Ezenwa laughs.
“Running at the Commonwealth Games will let every Australian see me and know that I am Australian and here to contribute to the nation in whatever way I can.”