THE Nigerian women’s 4×100m team to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics has failed to make it to the final of the event.
The makeshift quartet of hurdler Tobi Amusan, sprinter Grace Nwokocha, long jumper Ese Brume and 400m specialist Patience Okon-George finished sixth in their heat.
Running in Heat 2, the Nigerian ladies returned a time of 43.25 seconds and, not surprisingly, got eliminated.
Blessing Okagbare would have led the quartet but she failed a drugs test and at least one of the 10 Nigerian athletes disqualified for the country’s non-compliance with doping rules would have been involved.
Germany won the heat in 42.00s, followed by Switzerland (42.05s) and China (42.82s).
Great Britain ran the fastest time in the two heats combined as they won the much faster Heat 1 in a national record time of 41.55s.
USA was second in a season’s best time of 41.90. Nigeria was 12th overall out of the 16 teams that ran in the heats.
In the men’s shot put final, Nigeria’s Chukwuebuka Enekwechi finished 12th out of 12 competitors in a disappointing performance.
Enekwechi, who brought attention to the shoddy treatment of Nigerian athletes with his short video of him washing his only official kit in Tokyo, threw 19.74m in the final.
He was the only finalist whose distance was under the 20m mark as United States of America’s Ryan Crouser won gold and set a new Olympic record with 23.30m.
Another American, Joe Kovacs, won silver with 22.65m, while New Zealand’s Tomas Walsh won bronze with a personal season’s best of 22.47m.
