Prior to yesterday, team Nigeria had won seven gold, two silver and one bronze medals, with a particularly strong showing in power lifting. Last night, however, powerlifter Josephine Orji, shattered the world record of the women’s 86kg event with a lift of 154kg to win the gold medal.
Team Nigeria is now comfortably seated in 10th position on the overall medals table with eight gold, two silver and one bronze medals. At the Sydney Paralympics which took place in Australia in 2000, Nigeria put in her best performance ever, bringing back seven gold, one silver and five bronze medals.
Orji’s performance yesterday capped the brilliant performance of Team Nigeria’s special athletes at the Games. A swashbuckling fair-complexioned lady who was sure of her capacity Orji opted to enter the battle with the other competitors on a frightening scale.
She entered the contest with 151kg lift, a weight that was far beyond the capacity of any other competitor in her category. The only other lifter who came close to her effrontery, Egypt’s Nadya Ali, failed in all her three attempts to lift 145kg.
With the gold already in the kitty, Orji now set her mind at taking the world record. Twice she failed to lift the 154kg but buoyed on by her vociferous teammates and technical adviser Areh Feyisetan, Orji dug deep into her inner strength in the third attempt to surmount the obstacle and pocketed the world record.
Her attempt at lifting 160kg was a mission impossible but she was, however, consoled with climbing the podium for the precious gold and a world record to butt. a day previously, Flora Ugwunwa had won the Women’s Javelin Throw event.
With a throw of 20.25m, Ugwunwa set a new world record to beat Tunisia’s Hania Aidi and South Africa’s Ntombizanele Situ to second and third places respectively. A day earlier Lauretta Onye won Nigeria’s other track and field gold in the shot put event.
Comments
Post a Comment