Oyesade Olatoye made history Saturday at the 22nd African Athletics Championship in Port Louis, Mauritius when she became the first Nigerian woman to win the gold medal in the hammer throw.
The 25 year old threw the gold winning mark on her third attempt after failing to hit the 60m mark in her first two tries.
She threw 57.78m in her first attempt which pushed to third in the ranking behind Algeria’s Bouzebra Zouina who opened with 59.86m and Egypt’s Barakat Rawan (58.98).
The Egyptian who came to the championship with the best mark became the first athlete to hit the 60m after she threw 60.36m in the second round.
Olatoye then took charge of proceedings from the third round when she threw 63.67m to jump to the gold medal position.
The Algerian, Zouina responded with 63.48 in the fourth round but it didn’t ruffle any feather before the Nigerian closed out the competition with another huge throw of 63.64m which was good enough to even win the gold.
An elated expressed delight at the victory.
‘This is huge. I never knew I made history inside the cage…the first Nigerian woman to win gold in the event in championship history, wow,’ she exclaimed and promised more is going to come from her.
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