It’s almost a week to the day that the curtains fell on the 33rd Olympiad with Team Nigeria failing to pull her weight, having left the beautiful French capital, Paris, without a single medal. While countries like Saint Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Botswana, and Guatemala, all with a fraction of the population of the so-called Giant of Africa, punched above their weights by winning gold medals, Nigeria, with a population nudging over 200 million, failed to see any of her athletes even get near to mounting the podium. Even the Refugee Olympic Team managed to secure a bronze medal! Botswana, with a population of just over 2.
4 million, took only 11 athletes to Paris for two events (athletics and swimming) and even stole the headlines when Letsile Tebogo stunned the bookies and all the big names to win the gold in the 200m. Tebogo, who set a national record of 9.86 when finishing sixth in 100m final, produced a dominant last 50 metres and crossed the line in 19.
46 seconds, beating his chest as he became the fifth-fastest man in history over 200m, and was also the first African to do so. The 21-year-old showed his versatility by also being part of his nation’s 4×100 and 4x400m teams powering the tiny nation to silver in the longer race just finishing behind the US. On the other hand, Nigeria went to Paris with 88 athletes and still finished empty handed in the 11 events entered for.
It was sad seeing Team Nigeria’s athletes, even the highly rated stars like Tobi Amusan, w.