Oborodudu claims silver for Nigeria’s first-ever wrestling Olympics medal

32-year-old Blessing Oborodudu has accomplished what no one else has by winning an Olympic medal for Nigeria in wrestling. The number 2 ranked wrestler in the world in the women’s 68kg freestyle category picked up the silver medal after failing to defeat America’s Tamyra Stock-Mensah. The American defeated Oborodudu 4-1 to pick up the gold medal, leaving the Nigerian with the silver medal. According to the Nigeria Wrestling Federation (NWF) president Daniel Igali, Oborodudu’s success is a result of 10 years’ hard work and dedication. She joins Ese Brume as the country’s only medalists from the Tokyo Olympics

In the men’s shotput, Nigeria’s Chukwuebuka Enekwechi qualified for the finals after finishing in fourth place in the men’s shotput qualification Group B. Enekwechi launched his shotput to a distance of 21.16m to place fourth and pick up one of the non-automatic qualifying spots to reach the final in his first Olympics appearance.

In the men’s 200m, Divine Oduduru was left heartbroken as he finished outside the automatic qualifying placed in Heat 1 of the semifinals, and also missed the non-automatic qualifying places by a fraction of a second. Oduduru finished in third place with a time of 20.16 seconds behind 17-year-old Erriyon Knight (20.02 seconds) and Rasheed Dwyer (20.13 seconds). He narrowly failed to qualify with one of the two non-automatic spots as his time was the third fastest of the non-automatic qualifiers with Jereem Richards picking up the final spot for being 0.06 seconds faster than Oduduru.