For some time now, the curiosity of one single person has charted a course for the whole of Africa’s most populous country to follow, prompting the citizenry themselves to raise questions on their companion’s new-found love which has once again, brought the name ‘Nigeria’ on the global front burner.
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games are ongoing in PyeongChang, South Korea, with Nigeria making their debut. In all, eight countries from Africa are participating and that number is a record for the continent. The countries are Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco and Togo.
The only other African country – Eritrea – are debutants. Just like Nigeria. Winter sports favour snowy climes but Africa, on a large scale, is a hot continent which does not endow its athletes with the orientation of ice sports and therefore, does not encourage their participation.
Thankfully, however, Nigeria, blessed with material and human resources, have exports to even the farthest part of the globe. These ones are exposed to the wherewithal of other lands and fields. And when the idea that Nigeria could, after all, feature in a Winter Olympics was conceived, it was borne in on a Moriam Seun Adigun, a Chicago-born athlete.
Ironically Adigun, a celebrated athlete, didn’t have the faintest idea of bobsled, ice-related sport until 2014, two years after she had contemplated retiring from sports, following her participation in the 2012 London Olympics, where represented Nigeria in the 100m hurdle event. “The crazy but amazing journey”, as she told The Associated Sport, for her into the unknown world of a winter sport (bobsled) started when she decided to watch and cheer her friends participating in the XXXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Fascinated by what she had seen, Adigun, about eight months later, was on her way to trials with the US team in Dallas and for doing very well, she was invited to train with the team. She had been with the US team for one year when she got to know that Nigeria and in fact, the whole of Africa had never been represented in the sport at all. Undaunted, Adigun went ahead to recruit her companions Akuoma Omeoga and Ngozi Onwumere.
“I started bobsled at 28 years old. It’s not that I wasn’t able to start earlier. I didn’t have a clue about it,” the 31-year-old Adigun told CNN.
Adigun had built her own sled (the vehicle for the bobsled proper) from wood and named it ‘Maeflower’, after her late step sister’s nickname, ‘Mae Mae’. Having won Omeoga and Onwumere over, the trio began preparations for the challenges ahead using ‘Maeflower’, which she called “bobsled 101 tool” to shape up in Houston where there was no snow.
But for the now ambitious Nigerians, challenges lay ahead. To qualify for the Winter Olympics, they had to complete five races across the three cities of Utah, Whistler and Calgary. They would also need money to travel round and also get the necessary equipment. They consequently launched A Go Fund Me campaign in 2016 and were able to raise $75,000 in 14 months.
The team eventually qualified for the Winter Olympics on November 15, 2017 in Calgary and was able to maintain its world ranking until January 14, 2018, as demanded by rule. But this did not come on a silver platter. Leading up to the Utah race on January 9, 2017, the athletes lost two days of training runs out of the statutory four to bad weather. Needless to say that this told on the fledgling bobsledders. It may well explain why a nervous Omeoga put her pants on the backward as the team was suiting up for the race.
At the Whistler race, under the frigid and foggy weather, Onwumere injured her hip while even the leader Adigun, Onwumere’s one-time athletics coach at the University of Houston, broke three helmets and the team bungled one of two races.
Non-completion of one of the two races in Whistler thus implied that the team must complete the two races in the last leg of the preliminaries in Calgary to qualify for the Olympics. But after braving the odds in the second race, Nigeria went through to the Olympics. The first race, of which Omeoga was the brakeman, went smooth. “I almost forgot to brake, honestly” recalls Onwumere, the brakeman in the second race, to ESPN.
On the way to making history, Adigun and her mates encountered a statutory challenge, which if it had not been overcome, would have made the sport to remain a total alien to Nigeria. One of the official Olympic rules states that once a team is in place for the sport, the team must begin to operate under a national governing body. Of course, for the natural reason that Nigeria does not have a snowy climate, the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) did not have such federations that tended ice-related sports. It is on account of these heroines’ initiatives that the Bobsled and Skeleton Federation of Nigeria was founded and the pioneer president is Chief Solomon Ogba, former president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN). The corresponding body at the international level is the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation.
BOBSLED: Know the game
Bobsled and Skeleton: According to Wikipedia, ‘sledding’ is a worldwide winter activity generally carried out in a prone or seated position on a vehicle generally known as ‘sled’, ‘a sledge’ (Old English), or a ‘sleigh’. Sledding, which is also known as ‘sledging’ or ‘sleighing’, is also said to be the basis of three Olympic sports – luge, skeleton and bobsledding.
The use of sled as a more efficient means of transportation of materials and people than wheeled vehicles in cold and icy areas is said to date back to centuries.
The modern sport of sledding (i.e. luge, skeleton and bobsledding) was said to have originated in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in the 19th century with George Robertson, a student, winning the first international sled race. Robertson was said to have defeated 19 other competitors from across Europe and the United States.
In 1926, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared bobsleigh and skeleton as Olympic sports and adopted the rules of the St. Moritz run as the officially recognized Olympic rules.
While the Olympics provides for a two-member crew in both the men’s and women’s categories, it also approves of a four-member crew for men only. This was the impression of Simidele Adeagbo, another Nigerian athlete, who on reading about the exploits of Adigun, Omeoga and Onwumere, got in touch with them by social media, expressing her desire to join the team and make up the number.
She was informed that the women’s bobsled is strictly two-member crew – the driver and the brakeman. Adigun, a brakeman while she was with the US team, is the driver for the Nigerian team, while the role of brakeman is alternated between Omeoga and Onwumere.
South Africa-based Adeagbo was, however, not discouraged. And so when the search for a Skeleton athlete began, the former triple and long jumper jumped at the opportunity.
Skeleton is a winter sport in which a person rides a small sled (skeleton bobsled) through a frozen rack while lying face down (prone). The race involves only a single rider. After featuring in the 1928 and 1948 Olympics, skeleton was added permanently to the Olympics from the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where a women’s race was added.
Adeagbo’s tryout for a place in the Nigerian bobsled and skeleton team to PyeongChang in July 2017 in Houston was the closest she had come in touch with skeleton and after finishing third in two races, she not only qualified for the Winter Olympics, she also became the first African, just as Adigun and Co are the trailblazers in bobsled, on the African continent.
Since Senegal became the first African country to participate in a Winter Olympic Games in 1984 (through Lamine Gueye), the continent has continued its search for its first medal from the games. But could the unusual circumstances surrounding the Nigerian team from conception forebode an impressive outing this time for the continent?
BIODATA
Moriam Seun Adigun
Born in Chicago, on January 3, 1987, Seun, niece to basketball legend, Hakeem Olajuwon, is from Surulere Local Government area of Lagos State. Before now, Adigun had represented Nigeria and won laurels too. She won the gold in the 100m hurdle at the African Championship in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2010. The following year, she also bagged the gold in the 100m hurdle at the All Africa Games in Maputo, Zimbabwe. Adigun also went to the 2012 London Olympics under the Nigerian flag and had planned to retire after the games. She says she had loved to be a basketballer, but for her coach who told her that her “legs were born to run.” She is on the verge of rounding off her doctorate of chiropractic/masters of science dual degree.
Ngozi Onwumere
Born in Mesquite, Dallas on January 23, 1992, Ngozi attended University of Houston and has represented Nigeria in the past. She claimed the silver in the 200m event of the 2015 All Africa Games in Brazzaville. Ngozi also won the gold in the 4 by 100m relay event with Blessing Okagbare, Lawretta Ozoh and Cecilia Francis at the games. She went into retirement after representing Nigeria at the 2015 IAAF World Relays in Nassau, the Bahamas. Ngozi hails from Umuchima in Imo State.
Akuoma Omeoga
Akuoma was born in Minnesota on June 22, 1992 and she ran track at the University of Minnesota. She actually planned to go into another sport like football after college, but found herself delving into bobsled. Akuoma is from Umuahia in Abia State.
Simidele Adeagbo
At 36, Simidele is the oldest member of the Nigerian contingent to the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. Born in Toronto, Canada, Simidele lived in Nigeria as a child. The former triple and long jumper from Oke-Imesi, Ekiti State would have been part of the US team to the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing but missed out by eight inches. She is a four-time NCAA All American and triple jump record holder for the University of Kentucky. Simidele is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she works as brand manager for Nike.
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