Another setback for Nigeria in the ongoing Tokyo Olympic Games, as Grace Nwokocha, the country’s last hope in women’s 100m crashed out.
This is coming hours after sprinter, Blessing Okagbare, one of the underdogs for the 100-meter final, was suspended for doping on Saturday (July 31st) after testing positive for growth hormone.
Naija News reports that the 2008 Olympic runner-up in the long jump, Okagbare (32) was tested out of the competition on July 19. She is the first athlete declared positive during the Olympic period of the Tokyo Games.
Okagbare and Nwokocha had on Friday, July 30 qualified for the semifinals, giving Nigeria hope of winning a medal. However, Nwokocha crashed out on Saturday after finishing fifth in heat 3 of women’s 100m semis with a time of 11.07 seconds.
She was pitched against the legendary Jamaican and current world fastest female sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica in heat 5. World champion Fraser-Pryce, chasing a third gold medal in the event, surged into the final at Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium with a time of 10.73sec, the fastest time of the semi-finals.
Meanwhile, Nigeria on Thursday saw ten of its 23 athletes selected for the Games fail because they failed to meet out-of-competition doping control standards, with Nigeria among the countries classified as “high risk” by the IAU and ahead of submit to additional obligations. “The sports system in Nigeria is totally flawed and we, the athletes, are still collateral victims,” Okagbare lamented on Twitter.
