By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria will end its outing at the Paris 2024 Olympics with no medals as its last chance of being on the podium was dashed on Friday.
This happened after the World Record holder, Tobi Amusan, failed to reach the 100m Hurdles final at the ongoing sporting event. She came third in the first semi-final of the event.
She posted in a time of 12.55 seconds after a slow start and had to wait to check the outcomes of the two other semi-finals to see if she would qualify, however, Jamaica’s Ackera Nugent crossed the finish line of the third semi-final in a time of 12.44 seconds to finish in third place while France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela ran 12.52 seconds to finish fourth in same race.
Both runners posted faster times and secured the qualification spots, ending Nigeria’s chance of a podium finish at this Olympics.
Also, Nigeria was disqualified from the 4x400m men’s relay team for the final after infractions.
The country’s last Olympics gold medal came in Sydney 2000 and in London 2012, it could not get a single podium finish.
At the last edition of the tournament held in Tokyo in 2021 due to COVID-19, Nigeria, which has the highest population in Africa, secured just one silver and one bronze.
After failures in football, basketball, long jump, weightlifting, and cycling among others, eyes had shifted to Amusan who set a new record in the women’s 100 meters hurdles at the 2022 world championships in Eugene, Oregon, United States after posting 12.12 seconds, breaking the previous record 12.20 seconds set by American Kendra Harrison in 2016 and becoming the first Nigeria’s world record holder in an athletics event.
However, with her lack of qualification, Nigeria will be without a medal at the games which ends on Sunday.
For the men’s relay, the quartet of Emmanuel Ojeli, Ezekiel Nathaniel, Dubem Amene and Chidi Okezie finished heat 2 with a Season’s Best time of 2 minutes 59.81 seconds but it was adjudged that one of the Nigerian runners crossed lanes and that led to the tripping of a South African runner.
France won the race in 2 minutes 59.53 seconds with Belgium taking the 3rd automatic spot in 2 minutes 59.84 seconds
The spot won by Nigeria has been given to South Africa.
Dipo Olowookere