2024 Olympics: Team Nigeria Eyes First Medal In Paris As Oborududu Seeks Bronze
Team Nigeria will be gunning for its first medal, a bronze, at the ongoing 2024 Paris Olympics today, courtesy of an impressive showing by Blessing Oborududu in the Women’s Freestyle 68kg wrestling event
The bronze medal classification came a few hours ago as the 35-year-old wrestler endured a painful 1-3 loss in her semi-final match against Kyrgyzstan’s Meerim Zhumanazarova.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games silver medallist clashed heads with Zhumanazarova in the first half and the impact slowed her down as the match wore on.
On Monday night, the loss inside the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris saw Oborududu, ranked World number 6, stepping down from her silver medal triumph at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Interestingly, Zhumanazarova, ranked world number 16, was a bronze medallist at the Tokyo Games
On her way to the bronze medal match, Oborududu defeated Linda Morais of Canada 8-1 in the qualification round at the Champ de Mars Arena in Paris.
In the quarter-final round, the Nigerian, who debuted at the Rio Olympic Games in 2016, proved a better wrestler, coming from behind to beat home-favourite, Koumba Larroque of France.
From 1-2 down to a 3-2 towards the final stage of the bout, things took a dramatic turn with 30 seconds remaining as Oborududu secured a pinfall to leave the score at 5-2.
The Parisian contested the scores but when the video of the fall was reviewed, the Nigerian won and secured a point while her opponent had a point deducted leaving the final score line at 6-2 to silence the capacity crowd at the arena.
In the other semi-final, Amit Elor of the United States (US) defeated Pak Sol Gum of North Korea 10-0 in a bout that officials classified as overwhelming technical superiority.
The competition format indicates that the two finalists will wrestle for the gold and silver medals.
Similarly, each wrestler losing to one of the two finalists moves into the repechage that culminates in a pair of bronze medal matches featuring the semi-final losers who each face the remaining repechage opponent from their half of the bracket.
