Baby Jet is one of Ghana football’s most popular nicknames, and whenever it is mentioned, it is about former Black Stars captain and Ghana’s all-time leading scorer, Asamoah Gyan.
Gyan explained in a previous interview that he got the nickname because of his fast pace and baby face when he was younger.
Unlike Gyan, Alice Annum, the first Ghanaian sports personality to bear the nickname, earned it as a result of his lightning speed on the tartan tracks.
Annum is a retired Ghanaian athlete who competed for Ghana on the international stage from the 1960s to the 1970s.
The three-time All-African Games gold medallist began as a long jumper but went on to become one of Ghana’s greatest sprinters of all time.
The legendary sprinter, born in Accra on October 20, 1948, will turn 74 in just over two months.
Her talent was discovered during the now-defunct annual National Sports Festivals. She was awarded a Ghanaian athletes’ scholarship to study and compete at the University of Tennessee.
Annum competed for Ghana in four different events: the 100m, 200m, 4x100m, and long jump. After becoming the first Ghanaian female to compete in the Olympics in 1964, she set the standard for many Ghanaian women to follow.
Annum failed to qualify in the Women’s long jump with a leap of 545cm in her first Olympic Games appearance in Tokyo.
She later represented Ghana in Mexico in 1968 and Munich in 1972. In the 1968 Olympics, Annum competed in the 200m and Long Jump. She did not advance from round one of the 200m, finishing seventh in her heat.
She did, however, make it to the final in the Long Jump with a leap of 5.61m but failed to make the podium.
Four years later in Munich, Alice Annum focused on the 100m and 200m and made significant progress in both events.
Annum made history by becoming the first female Ghanaian sprinter to compete in both the Women’s 100m and 200m finals.
She finished sixth in the 100m with a time of 11.41 seconds and seventh in the 200m with a personal best of 22.89s.
How did the Baby jet come about?
Annum got the nickname Baby Jet after chalking enormous success at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1970.
She won two silver medals, one in the 100m and the other in the 200m event, which set the tone for her stunning performance at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
She finished her career with a total of six medals, three gold (all won at the All-African Games), two silver, and one bronze (1974 Commonwealth Games).
The Action Progressive Institute in Ghana honoured Alice Annum in 2010 for her athletic achievements.
Alice Annum currently resides in Maryland, USA.
Watch how Alice Annum finished second in the 100m final in the 1970 Commonwealth games in the video below:
