Nigeria’s hope for medal dims as Tobi Amusan misses Women’s Olympics 100m hurdles final spot

Tobi Amusan, the athlete who has kept alive Nigeria’s hope for a medal in the ongoing Paris Olympics games, has crashed out of the tournament.

The 27-year-old, who filed out in lane six of the first heat of the event, on Friday, placed third in the Semi-finals of women 100m hurdle.

The current world champion and world record holder came behind United States’ Alayasha Johnson, who had a record of 12:39 seconds and Bahmas’ Devynne Charlton with a record of 12:50 seconds.

Amusan’s 12.55 seconds record was not enough to secure her a spot in the finals.

The feat is coming in the wake of Nigeria’s poor outing in the games.

Earlier, Team Nigeria’s 4×400 Men was disqualified despite qualifying for the relay final at the ongoing 2024 Olympics Games in Paris on Friday.

The quartet of Emmanuel Ojeli, Ezekiel Nathanial, Dubem Amene and Chidi Okezie earlier qualified for the final of men’s 4x400m, finishing 2nd in heat 2 with a Season’s Best of 2:59.81 behind host France.

However, the Nigerian team was disqualified for stepping on the line in their heat.

Nigerian athletes are yet to win a medal at the Olympics which will end on Sunday.

On Tuesday, former Super Eagles Coach, Adegboye Onigbinde, took a swipe at Nigeria’s performance in the game attributing it to lack of good sports administration in the country.

The veteran technical sports director said: “You see, why Nigerian athletes are not performing well in the ongoing Olympics and other international sports competitions is not technical, but administrative. Is it technical that an athlete who qualified properly in her event will be ridiculed by not registering her for participation?

“Situations like this will continue if our administrators don’t separate politics from sports.”

According to him, most of the administrators have forgotten the core objective of developmental programmes in sports which had earned the country some measure of success in the past.