Figure 1 Nigeria will be hoping to win more gold medals this year
For a nation of sports lovers, it is perhaps surprising that Nigeria does not have more of a glorious history at the Olympic Games as it has. This can be put down to a number of reasons but there is no doubt that the athletes do the country proud every time they represent.
The 2024 Paris Olympics is now fully underway and Nigeria has sent its largest-ever number of athletes to France in an attempt to boost its medal haul and make a mark in sporting history. If you are working out
how to bet on Paris 2024 you may not have the Nigerian athletes down as favorites in many events but their endeavors may well inspire stars of the future, no matter what the final result.
As the country comes together to cheer on our athletes in Paris this summer, we are going to take a look at our history at the Olympics, what the future may hold, and whether we can get excited about the Winter Olympics now as well.
The Nation at the Games
The Nigerian National Olympic Committee was formed in 1951 and sent its first group of athletes to Finland the very next year to compete in its first games. Nine male athletes made up the team in that inaugural showing – and although they were unable to bring home any medals, the dreams of a nation had begun.
Nigeria has sent a team to every summer Olympics since, aside from the 1976 edition in Canada when Congo led a boycott of African countries. The first medal, a bronze, was won in 1964 and the first golds came 32 years later in Atlanta when Chioma Ajunwa triumphed in the women’s long jump and the men’s soccer team famously beat Argentina in the final.
Medal Winners
As mentioned, Nigeria took just 12 years to win its first-ever medal at an Olympics, when Nojim Maiyegun claimed bronze in the light heavyweight boxing division in Tokyo in 1964. Boxing remained the country’s best chance of medals in the following years with further success in 1972 and 1984.
It was at those 1984 games in Los Angeles that the track and field team won its first medals for Nigeria – and it is in those sports that Nigeria has been most successful since. The relay teams have done particularly well and claimed an impressive haul of medals before Ajunwa brought home the first-ever gold from Atlanta in 1996.
Since then, the Nigerian team have won medals of some description at every single games and has started to expand the sports represented. Track and field and soccer are still two of the best arenas for our athletes but there have also been medal winners in taekwondo, wrestling, and weightlifting.
Nigerian Memories
Although the Olympic Games is the best example of the old sports saying, “It is not the winning but the taking part that counts”, the gold medal is one of the most universally recognized identifiers of achievement and excellence. And Nigeria has been able to celebrate three in the games’ history.
Chioma Ajunwa had actually already represented her country in football before switching to track and field. She won medals in the sprints and the long jump at a number of international competitions before the highlight of her career in 1996. She had only just finished serving a suspension when she made the final of the long jump in Atlanta, managing a leap of 7.12m on her first attempt. It was enough to win her the gold and become the first Nigerian – as well as the first West African woman – to do so in a track and field event.
That wasn’t the end of Nigerian success at those Olympics though. One of the enduring memories of any games was the Super Eagles surprising everyone to claim gold in the men’s soccer event. The competition was held across the US, with U-23 squads taking part for the second time since the switch four years earlier.
Nigeria was one of three African nations and one of the lowest seeds before a ball was kicked. But the legendary Nwankwo Kanu scored the only goal of the game against Hungary to set the team on its way, before a victory over Japan in the second game all but saw it progress to the quarterfinals. Mexico was beaten in the last eight before a golden goal from Kanu claimed a famous victory over Brazil in the semifinal. Nigeria has been 3-1 down with just 12 minutes to play in normal time, before ultimately winning 4-3.
Nigeria faced Argentina in the gold medal game and went behind almost immediately. The two sides were level at 2-2 as the match drew closer to the end before Emmanuel Amunike went down in history, scoring the winner in the very last minute. Nigeria had
stunned the soccer powerhouses and won Africa’s first-ever medal in the sport.
The other gold medal winners in Nigerian history were not quite as fortunate to celebrate their victory. The 2000 4x400m team finished second in the final and initially were awarded silver medals. It later turned out that the winning US team had fielded an ineligible athlete and were disqualified. However, that decision was then overturned and it wasn’t actually until 2008 when US athlete Antonio Pettigrew admitted that he had used banned drugs, that Nigeria was bumped up to first. The team received its gold medals eight years after the race ended.
Figure 2 Can Paris prove a successful city for Nigeria in 2024?Paris 2024 and Future Olympics
Nigerians will now be cheering on its athletes at the country’s 18th Olympics. Hopefully, there will be further success, with more medals won by our team. The games still hold an important place in the sports world and winners go down in history, becoming legends in the process.
With Nigerian athletes also competing at the Winter Olympics now as well, we might well see greater achievements across a whole range of sports over the years to come.
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