20 August 2008
Lagos — Blessing Okagbare's quest for glory in the long jump bit the dust yesterday when she narrowly failed to make the grade.
She leapt 6.59m to place fifth in Group B of the event, which held at the Bird's Nest.
However, her leap placed her in the 13th position, which meant she missed the cut to make the final taking place on Friday.
It was a painful outing for the University of Texas, El Paso undergraduate, making her Olympic debut, as only the top 12 finishers made it through to the final.
Jamaica's Chelsea Hammod piped the Nigerian to the final qualification ticket by the narrowest of margins - 0.01m!
The Jamaican competing in Group A made the breakthrough with her first leap, which was 6.60m, while the 20-year-old Nigerian could only manage 6.59m in her final leap.
However, with age still very much on her side Nigerian Athletic officials here believe they have a possible gem who can match Chioma Ajunwa's Atlanta'96 performance by the time of the next Olympics in London.
The former Falcons star leapt 7.12m to win the gold medal in Atlanta.
Incidentally none of the qualifiers came anyway near Ajunwa's leap with the best Higa Maurren Maggi of Brazil toping Group A with a leap of 6.79m, while Group B winner Brittney Reese of the United States managing only 6.87m.
Conversely with the final still to come perhaps the ladies were saving their strength for Friday's final and we may see longer jumps.
And in the other track event in which Team Nigeria competed in, African champion Oludamola Osayomi failed to make it to the final of the 200m.
Osayomi, who also crashed out of the semi-finals of the 100m on Sunday evening, placed sixth in her heat in 23.27 seconds.
Running in lane nine, the Nigerian finished two places outside the qualification positions in Heat 2. The race was won by Bahrain's Roqaya Al-Gassra in 22.27 seconds.
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