By Arinze Ude.Day 3:
Nigeria’s impressive outing at the Games continued yesterday as she won her second gold medal of the Games when 33year old Ivory Nwokorie in the Women’s PowerLifting Competition (44kg category). She lifted 109kg ahead of the Silver medallist, 32 year old Turk, Cigdem Dede who lifted 105kg and Bronze medallist, 34 year old Ukrainian Lidiia Soloviova who lifted 100kg.
In the Men’s 52kg category, 19 year old Ikechukwu Obichukwu took the silver medal for lifting 175kg as well.
Nigeria won her second silver medal of the night when 19 year old Anthony Ulonnam lifted 188kg in the Men’s 56kg Powerlifting category; 30year old Egyptian, Sherif Othman took the Gold medal lifting 197kg for this category.
In Tennis, Nigeria’s Tunde Adisa (42 years old) got beaten again, this time around by 29 year old French Federic Bellais.
In Athletics, 15year old Unyime Uwak ran the 200m in 26.65secs (Women’s 200m (T-46) Preliminaries) to book a spot in the final round. She will start the final in lane 2.
20year old Suwaibidu Galadima finished third in Men’s 200m T-46 Heat 1 but it wasn’t enough to push him into the final round. He ran the 200m in 22.98secs. Fellow Nigerians, 27 year old Yunusa Bashiru and 32 year old Saidi Adedeji competed in Heat 2 and Heat 3 of the competition respectively. Bashiru was unlucky to be disqualified while Adedeji booked a place in the final round by finishing fourth (22.87secs) in the preliminaries.
Day 4:
Nigeria won her fourth Gold medal in Power-Lifting event at the on going Paralympics in London.
Joy Onalapo and Esther Oyema won Gold medals in the women’s 52kg and 42kg categories respectively setting new World Records in the process.
30 year old Joy Onalapo was a clear winner as she lifted 131kg ahead of Russian Tamara Podpalnaya and Chinese Cuijuan Xiao, who lifted 119kg and 118kg respectively thus settling for the silver and bronze medals.
30 year old Esther Oyema was also a distant winner as she lifted 135kg ahead of Russian Olesya Lafina and Chinese ShanShan Shi, who lifted 120kg and 114kg, taking the Silver and Bronze medals respectively.
Ifeanyi Nnajiofor added a silver medal to the country’s growing list of medals by lifting 188kg in the Men’s Powerlifting 60kg category.
The 39 year old finished below Iranian Nader Moradi who took the Gold medal and above Chinese Quanxi Yang who settled for the Bronze.
In Athletics, 15 year old Unyime Uduak couldn’t add to the medal haul as she finished fourth in the Women’s 200m T-46 final round. Although she ran the race in her personal best time of 26.65secs, it wasn’t sufficient for her to grab a medal.
