NIGERIA’S journey at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics ended on a sour note on Friday as the country’s last participant lost in her event without getting close to the medal zone.
Fighting in the women’s freestyle 50kg category, Adijat Idris lost her round of 16 wrestling bout to Ukraine’s Oksana Livach.
The 19-year-old Nigerian, making her Olympic debut, stood no chance against the 24-year-old Ukrainian.
Livach, who won bronze at the World Championships in 2018 as well as gold at the European Championships in 2019 and silver in 2020, was too experienced for the Nigerian teenager and easily beat Idris by technical superiority 10-0.
Idris’s defeat brings to an end an Olympics for Team Nigeria blighted by controversy and poor performances.
Few days into the Games and on the eve of the athletics event, 10 of Nigeria’s 23 track and field athletes in Tokyo were disqualified for not taking enough out-of-competition doping tests, leaving the team in tatters.
As if that was not bad enough, Nigeria’s leading athlete and one of the most recognisable names from the country, Blessing Okagbare, was suspended for testing positive for banned human growth hormones.
The 10 disqualified athletes staged a protest on the streets of Tokyo, calling the world’s attention to the incompetence and negligence of Nigerian administrators who they accused of being more interested in power than performing their actual duties.
Even Puma pulled out of their partnership with the country in the middle of the Games after the sportswear makers got dragged into a leadership tussle in the Athletics Federation of Nigeria and the kits they provided for the Olympics we’re abandoned.
In the sporting halls, Nigeria also disappointed, with athletes and teams performing below expectations.
D’Tigers lost all their three games in Tokyo to Australia, Germany and Italy just days after raising hope with exhibition victories over world No.1 USA and No.4 Argentina.
Team Nigeria captain Aruna Quadri, who made African history by reaching the men’s singles quarter-finals at Rio 2016, lost his first game in Tokyo and crashed out in the early rounds.
In wrestling, the big medal prospect Odunayo Adekuoroye snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in her first bout, losing by fall after leading comfortably.
However, there were rays of sunshine amid the gloom, with Blessing Oborududu winning silver and Nigeria’s first-ever wrestling medal when she reached the women’s 68kg final.
Ese Brume, who won Nigeria’s only medal at the World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar in 2019, again won the country’s only track and field medal in Tokyo, the women’s long jump bronze.
In the end, Nigeria claimed one silver and one bronze medal, an improvement on London 2012 (no medal) and Rio 2016 (one bronze from the men’s football team), but still way short of projections.
