The Future Olympian Athletics Classic, initially scheduled for the first quarter of 2026, has been rescheduled to the last quarter of the year to expand its scope into a truly national competition covering all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.

In a statement, Dr. Bruce Ijirigho, a former quarter-miler and captain of Team Nigeria to the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, explained that the postponement would allow the organisers to design a comprehensive national framework aimed at discovering and nurturing athletic talents across the country.
According to Ijirigho, the revised timeline will enable the Organising Committee to ensure that young talents from every region of Nigeria are identified early and properly developed to compete successfully at the global level.

The competition is being organised by Youth Sports Renaissance Foundation (YSRF), a non-profit organisation registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and founded by Bruce Ijirigho, Godwin Obasogie, and Charlton Ehizuelen. The foundation is dedicated to reviving secondary school sports, particularly athletics, across Nigeria.
Ijirigho, who also serves as the Project Lead, emphasised that the Future Olympian Athletics Classic is not about reinventing the wheel but about restoring a proven system that once helped identify and develop elite Nigerian athletes at a young age.

He noted that many athletes of his generation were discovered while in secondary school, provided with proper coaching, academic support, and access to sports scholarships, which enabled them to combine education with athletics and later emerge as national, continental, and global champions.
“The bane of sports development in Nigeria, and indeed many African countries, is that young people do not get opportunities early enough and lack access to modern, age-appropriate coaching techniques that accelerate athletic development,” Ijirigho said.

He added that the Future Olympian Athletics Classic will not only identify talents in their early teens but also feature international coaching clinics designed to transfer modern skills and methodologies to local coaches and games masters.
“This approach will ensure that we do a better job of nurturing these athletes to become Olympians and world beaters by their late teens and early twenties. That is why this competition is strictly for secondary school students—it is a developmental programme,” he explained.

Ijirigho also highlighted the rationale behind expanding the programme nationwide, noting that athletic talent exists in every corner of Nigeria.
“Talents abound in every nook and cranny of the country. There are outstanding middle- and long-distance runners, sprinters, quarter-milers, jumpers, hurdlers, and other athletes who were either never discovered or discovered too late. With this postponement, we can widen the tent and give young Nigerians equal opportunities to be discovered,” he said.

Expressing optimism about Nigeria’s athletic future, Ijirigho said the country has all it takes to dominate global athletics if its development programmes are properly structured.
“The future of world athletics belongs to Nigerians. Once we get our development strategy right, the Future Olympian Athletics Classic will play a major role in shaping the next generation of Olympians and global champions when it begins in the last quarter of 2026,” he added.