Amusan And Ajayi Are Going To Budapest For The Prize Money
Budapest · Friday 11 September 2026
Tobi Amusan and Nathaniel Ajayi lead Team Nigeria to the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, with Onwuzurike among those named. The event is built around unusually large prize money.
Why a prize-money meeting is a different proposition
Track and field has a structural problem: enormous global visibility for about ten days every four years, and very little reliable income for athletes in between. Championships bring medals and ranking points. They have historically not brought a living.
The Nigerian athletics pattern
| What Nigeria reliably produces | What reliably goes wrong |
|---|---|
| World-class sprinters and hurdlers | Travel booked late |
| Field event medallists | Kit and accreditation problems |
| Athletes who self-fund and still win | Allowances paid months after |
Every row on the right has produced a public complaint from a named athlete.
Amusan is a world record holder and a world champion. That she competes at all is a credit to a support system that is substantially private, built around her own management and overseas training base rather than around a federation programme.
Nigeria has never had a talent problem in athletics. It has had an administration problem wearing a tracksuit.
What a big-money event changes
It shifts leverage toward the athlete. A competitor whose season income comes from meeting payments rather than federation allowances is far less exposed to a domestic body that pays late, and far more able to fund a coach and a physio directly.
What it does not change
The pipeline. Prize money at the top of the sport does nothing for a talented seventeen-year-old in Ogun State without a track, a coach or a way to get to trials. That is the part Nigerian athletics keeps deferring, and it is the reason the same handful of names carry every championship.
Reporting: The Nation Newspaper and World Athletics entry lists.
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