Sports
Tokyo Paralympics: Nigeria’s Ejike, Five Other Athletes To Watch
Team Nigeria Paralympics will participate in four events: Para Powerlifting, Para-Athletics, Para-Table Tennis and Para Rowing.
The first Paralympics debut for team Nigeria was far back Barcelona 1992, with six athletes who came back with three gold medals.
Nigeria largest contingent to the games was in Sydney 2000 with 31 Paralympics Athletes when Team Nigeria returned home with 13 medals.
Here are six athletes hoping to make an impact:
Ejike and 21 other athletes will be representing Nigeria.
Ejike won a medal in each of the Games she has been in, winning gold medals in 2004, 2008 and 2016 and silver medals in 2000 and 2012.
Team Nigeria in the Tokyo 2020 games this year. The Team captain Lucy Ejike, 44, who would be featuring in her sixth Paralympics after making her debut at Sydney 2000, has promised that the contingent would surpass the record at Rio 2016.
Rio 2016 in Brazil, was a successful outing for Team Nigeria, which became Africa best team and 17th overall on the medal table with eight gold, two silver and two bronze medals.
Known as the “Blade Jumper”, three-time Paralympic champion Rehm is aiming to push the boundaries even further after demolishing the T64 long jump world record in June.
The German, who turned 33 on Sunday, leapt 8.62m at the European Championships in Poland — beating the previous record by a full 14cm.
That jump would have been enough to win gold at every Olympics since 1992, and was only 33cm short of Mike Powell’s non-disabled world record.
Rehm has spoken of his desire to compete at the Olympics, but for the moment he is focused on adding more Paralympic gold to his collection in Tokyo.
“I try to be the best long jumper in the world,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter if I wear a prosthetic leg or if I have two sound legs. I just do what I can do, and I just try to be the best I can be.”
Wheelchair fencer Vio is a sporting icon in her native Italy, where she is a regular guest at Milan Fashion Week and has over a million followers on Instagram.
The 24-year-old, known as “Bebe”, started fencing at the age of five, but had both legs and forearms amputated when she contracted meningitis as an 11-year-old.
She turned her attention to wheelchair fencing – becoming the first competitive fencer with no arms or legs – and claimed a gold and a bronze at the 2016 Rio Paralympics.
But she has not been able to compete for two years because the pandemic has shut tournaments down, and she has admitted she is “scared” as she prepares to return to Tokyo.
“I don’t know what is going to happen this time, but I’m just so happy to be here,” she said.
“I miss it so much. I miss the vibration of the competition.”
England captain Harry Kane netted a hat-trick to guide Bayern Munich to an impressive victory against Stuttgart.
Kane’s goals, plus one from Kingsley Coman, helped Bayern end a three-game winless run in all competitions.
They faced a tough task against a Stuttgart side who sat back and limited their chances, leading Vincent Kompany’s side to enter the break frustrated and with the deadlock unbroken.
Bayern eventually found a way past Stuttgart’s steely defence when Kane drilled a low effort into the bottom corner from around 30 yards out after Joshua Kimmich overturned possession.
Former Nigeria goalkeeper, Dosu Joseph, is full of thanks to God after he miraculously survived another life-threatening automobile accident recent at Kara, along the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way, where a heavy-duty truck ran into his SUV.
Narrating his ordeal, the 51-year-old, who guided Nigeria to gold in the Men’s Football Tournament of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, broke the news in a statement on his social media handles on Friday.
“To God be the glory, another death escaped by Grace and Mercy of God. Me and my friend SM were at Enyo Filling Station after Ojodu Berger bus stop to get fuel on Wednesday, October 2, 2024, around 6 p.m. when this MACK truck fully loaded with iron, with registration number LND 470 XX, left the road and crushed my car beyond repairs. Thank God for life,” he stated.
This is the second time the soft-spoken club proprietor will cheat death by a whisker, having been involved in an accident in 1997 that ended his career at 23 and left his spinal cord in bad shape.
He helped Julius Berger win the Nigeria FA Cup in November 1997 shortly a memorable Olympic outing by keeping a clean sheet in the finals against Katsina United. The following year, he was involved in the auto along Ikorodu Road, Lagos, which not only cut his career short but also left him almost paralysed, ending his spell at Serie A club Reggiana.
The former Nigeria international, who also kept goal for Julius Berger FC, said the case has been reported to Isheri Police Station, Ogun State, where the driver is currently detained and the truck also seized.
According to him, the owner of the truck said he can’t fix the badly damaged SUV until after a year.
Ex – Super Eagles of Nigeria, Okwuchukwu Waobikeze has observed that sports development in Nigeria is going down.
According to him, grassroots sports is very important, without it, the administrators cannot get it right. So everybody should key into grassroots sports development, he said.
Waobikeze said this last Wednesday in an interview with sports journalists shortly after the Port Harcourt All Stars Independence football festival (OCTOBERFEST) at the Port Harcourt club, Rivers State.
He explained that for sports administrators to get it right, grassroots development is key. “They should be organising competition at the grassroots level to fish out the young ones for different sporting activities.
“Grassroots sports is very important so the administrators have to go back to the grassroots.
” Sports Development in Nigeria is going down we need to go back to the basics.
“Look at the just concluded Paris Olympics, Nigeria did not win any medal.
” Our football team did not even qualify for the Olympics. We are going down.
” If they should go back to the grassroots, they will get young ones in the games and talents will be developed.
” I started from school games, to youth games before playing for the national team. Now everybody wants to fly board to play professional football and a lot do not know the basics of the game.
” A lot of people did not know the little things about the game, they just want to play. It is not done so,” Waobikeze stated.
Kiadum Edookor