Making of Champions

Nigeria’s foremost athlete Blessing Okagbare, who was part of Nigeria’s 4x100m quartet who finished 4th at the World Relays at the weekend, will be going for yet another Diamond League double this weekend in Eugene, USA, after her Long Jump and 200 metres wins on the same night in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago.

She will be contesting the Long Jump on Friday evening (May 30th) from 7pm local time (3am Nigerian time – not televised live). For the first time this season she’ll be up against the Olympic and 3-time World Champion, USA’s Brittney Reese, who beat Blessing by just 2 centimetres at last year’s World Championships. The whole field is strong – also competing is last year’s Long Jump Diamond League winner, Britian’s Shara Proctor, as well as USA’s Janay Deloach Soukup and Russia’s Darya Klishina, both of whom have jumped further than Blessing’s Personal Best of 7.00 metres during their careers. It will be interesting to see if Blessing is able to stretch her lead in the Diamond League standings for the Long Jump – she currently leads the standings, with 4 points from her win in Shanghai!

The 200 metres on Saturday at 10.13pm Nigerian time (Live on SS6) will be no less challenging. Blessing will be up against reigning 200m World Champion, Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, as well as current Olympic Champion, USA’s Alyson Felix, who is in her first 200 metre race since pulling up at last year’s World Championships Finals, where Blessing got the Bronze. The Silver Medallist in that race, Cote d’Ivoire’s Murielle Ahoure also races for the first time this season, so there will be plenty of competition for the first three spots, to win Diamond League points – Blessing also leads here, with 4 points from her 200m win in Shanghai!

There is no other Nigerian interest in this weekend’s Diamond League in Eugene, as 2-time Nigerian 400m Champion Regina George will not feature in the women’s 400 metres – one can only hope that we will see her again in the Diamond League soon, to replicate the form that saw her run a stunning 49.4 second split in the Bronze medal performance of Nigeria’s 4x400m women’s quartet at last week’s inaugural World Relay Championships. It would also seem that the 400m hurdles would also not feature Bahrain’s Kemi Adekoya, who just switched her allegiance from Nigeria, announcing her arrival with a new National Record for Bahrain at the Doha Diamond League earlier this month in 54.59s, the fastest time in the world this year!

For Nigerian viewers, SuperSport 6 (DSTV Channel 206) will show the Eugene Diamond League meet LIVE from 9 – 11pm Nigerian time on Saturday (May 31st). 

Blessing Okagbare will be going in the women’s 200m at 10.13pm. The women’s 400m will be at 9.24pm, while the women’s 400m hurdles will kick off the live broadcast, at 9.03pm.

Making of Champions will be bringing you special updates and reports ahead of, during and after each Diamond League event in 2014, with a particular focus on Nigeria’s leading athletes – stay tuned!

2014 IAAF Diamond League calendar

Doha, QAT – 9 May
Shanghai, CHN – 18 May
Eugene, USA – 31 May
Rome, ITA – 5 Jun
Oslo, NOR – 11 Jun
New York, USA – 14 Jun
Lausanne, SUI – 3 Jul
Paris, FRA – 5 Jul
Glasgow, GBR – 11-12 Jul
Monaco, MON – 18 Jul
Stockholm, SWE – 21 Aug
Birmingham, GBR – 24 Aug
Zurich, SUI – 28 Aug
Brussels, BEL – 5 Sep

On April 14th 2014, nearly 300 girls in Chibok in Northeastern Nigeria were abducted from their secondary school in the dead of the night by Boko Haram militants. At the recently concluded World Relay Championships in the Bahamas, the whole world of Track & Field got behind #BringBackOurGirlsNow – after posting our first series of photos yesterday, which featured IAAF President Lamine Diack, and Bahamian 4x400m Olympic GOLD medallist, Chris Brown, amongst others, here are more today, featuring British 400m Olympic GOLD & Silver Medallist, Christine Ohuruogu MBE, and former Bahamian 400m World Champion, Tonique Williams-Darling:

Christine Ohuruogu MBE, British 400m World Champion (’13, ’07), Olympic GOLD (’08) and Silver Medallist (’12)

Tonique Williams-Darling, Bahamian 400m Olympic Champion 2004

Bukola Abogunloko, Nigerian 4x400m World Relay Bronze Medallist, 2014

Tobi Ogunmola, Nigerian 400m Runner

Victoria Ohuruogu, British 400m Runner

Amechi Morton, Nigerian 400m Runner

Bambo Akani, Making of Champions Founder

Nigeria posted a commendable performance at these 1st ever World Relays, with a 4x400m Bronze and 4th place in the 4x100m, and it was perhaps fitting that it was our girls who posted those results. #BringBackOurGirls has slowly started ebbing from the world’s consciousness, but the girls are still very missing. We believe that we must keep up the pressure on the powers that be to #BringBackOurGirlsNow. Tomorrow, we will post more pictures from the Bahamas to keep the Chibok girls at the forefront of our minds. We need them home now.

It was a special night in the Bahamas and a hard fought race that saw Nigeria’s 4x400m Women take the Bronze Medal in a stunning time of 3:23.41, the fastest any Nigerian Quartet has run since the Falilat Ogunkoya-led team of the Sydney 2000 Olympics! Team USA more or less led from start to finish (3:21.73), but the Nigerian Quartet of Sade Abugan, Regina George, Omolara Omotosho and Patience Okon George, fought the Jamaicans (3:23.26) tooth and nail for the 2nd place, right till the very end!

“Look at the turbo being applied by Regina George round the bend – another storming leg for Nigeria!” the commentator excitedly blasts on the 2nd leg – we’re getting used to hearing that about this @DivaOnTheTrack, she did similar on the anchor legs at the 2013 World Championships and the Penn Relays in April. Her split on the 2nd leg was a mind boggling 49.4 seconds (the fastest of any athlete in the whole race)! Abugan led the team off with 52.30s, while Omotosho and P. George ran 50.9s & 50.81s splits respectively to bring the Bronze home for Team Nigeria! 

The awesomeness of this performance from the whole TEAM cannot be overstated – it is the first RELAY medal for Team Nigeria since the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and it is already the 3rd fastest Season for Nigeria in our history of running the women’s 4×4. Only the Silver Medal winning team of Atlanta ’96 (African Record Holders at 3:21.04) and the Sydney 2000 team (3:22.99) have ever run faster. This bodes extremely well for Team Nigeria for the Commonwealth Games this year, where they can now consider themselves a GOLD medal contender against the likes of Jamaica!

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We are likely witnessing a new dawn in Nigerian Athletics for the women’s 400 metres. At Making of Champions, we have long since considered Current 2-time 400m Champion Regina George as one to watch for the Rio 2016 Olympics. But now we must start looking at this whole team, not only as Relay medal contenders at the next Olympics, but also as possible semi-finalists and finalists in the individual 400 metres at Rio 2016! Bukola Abogunloko is the fifth member of this Relay team, who also picks up a Bronze medal after running the third leg in the heats!

Less than 2 hours later, Regina George and Patience Okon George (no relation) returned to the track, joining Dominique Duncan and Francesca Okwara for Nigeria’s first ever 4×200 metre run! Although they only finished in 7th, they set a new National Record of 1:33.71 by virtue of being the first ever quartet to contest the event for Nigeria! Something tells us that this is one NR which will not stand for very long – 2015 World Relay Championships: Team Nigeria is coming!

Nigeria put on a dominant display in the women’s 4x400m Heats at the World Relays on Saturday, winning comfortably in a Season’s Best of 3:27.07, to go through to the Finals on Sunday. The quartet of Sade Abugan, Regina George, Bukola Abogunloko andPatience Okon George  brought the team home, well ahead of their rivals in this heat:

Can they win a medal in the Finals on Sunday? The second Heat was stacked with USA, Jamaica & GB, who will all pose a threat for Nigeria in the finals. USA & Jamaica seem to be a cut above the other teams, and even though GB was third in that heat, the current 400m World Champion, Christine Ohuruogu did not run the Heats, so once she comes in for the Final, Team GB will also be tough to beat. Team Nigeria’s ladies may have to shave off up to 2 seconds of their Season’s Best to win a mdeal – we won’t have long to find out!

Here’s what Regina George had to say after the race:

Nigeria came home comfortably winning that heat in 3:27.07 – how does the team feel about the run? 

We came here to make the final, and you can’t ask for much more, so we’re pleased with that. Hopefully we can run a season’s best in the final.

That was a season’s best in the Heat just now, so how are you feeling about going even beyond that in the Final? 

Well, in any competition you’re meant to run faster in the final if everything goes right…

You haven’t met the Jamaicans or the Americans, so how do you feel about the team lowering your time enough to match them?

I feel pretty good about it. We’ll take it one step at a time – everybody is here to compete for the GOLD, and that’s what we came here to do. It will be hard, but it will be worth it once we come out with a season’s best.

You ran a storming 2^nd leg and you gave Bukola and Patience a great head start to lead from the front – will you be running the 2^nd leg in the final?

I don’t know – we just tried to moving things around in the Heats, but we’ll see when we talk to the coaches, then they will tell us what order to run in the finals.

Thank you and good luck for the finals

Thank you

The first ever World Relay Championships kick off in the Bahamas this weekend (May 24th/25th) and Team Nigeria will be there in full force! Nigeria has a 24-man contingent competing for Medals at the first ever World Relays, which has a total prize fund of $1.4 million (that’s ₦230 million)! The heats for the 4x100m and 4x400m especially promise to be loaded, given that the 8 teams that reach the finals of those events will qualify automatically for the Relays at the 2015 World Championships! Making of Champions will be covering the competition LIVE & DIRECT from the Bahamas, so stay tuned for updates throughout the weekend!

Below is the full LIVE  schedule for Nigerian viewers to tune in to watch Team Naija compete. For the first time ever, not only can you catch the competition on TV (SuperSports), you will be able to stream it LIVE on the internet, from the IAAF Official YouTube Channel! The detailed timings that follow are ONLY for the events Team Nigeria is competing in – men’s and women’s 4x100m, 4x200m & 4x400m (Heats and possibly Finals for each) – that’s up to 12 races in total, to cheer on Team Nigeria! (For the full schedule, which also includes the 4x800m & 4x1500m events, please click here)