Olympics
Four things you should know about Nigeria’s first wrestling medallist, Blessing Oborududu
From practising wrestling against her parents wishes, to her viral celebration at 2018 Commonwealth Games, here’s everything you should know about the African wrestling star and Tokyo finallist.
Blessing Oborududu began practicing wrestling as a young girl and got immersed in the sport.
But no one around her thought she was a wrestler. She ‘did not look like a wrestler’.
On Monday (2nd August), she cemented her name in Nigeria and African wrestling, as her country’s first-ever medallist in the Olympics.
Oborududu sailed into the final of the women’s 68kg freestyle wrestling after a dominant win over Mongolia’s Battsetseg Soronzonbold to gain revenge after losing to the same opponent in Rio, and is now set to clinch either gold or silver.
It has been a long journey to glory for the Nigerian wrestler, who planned to retire after Tokyo 2020.
She lost to Tamyra Mensah-Stock of the USA in the final.
1 – Oborududu is a10-time African champion
Oborududu announced herself to the wrestling world in 2007 when she was invited to join Nigeria’s team for the African Games. She was unrivalled in secondary school, where she started wrestling, and quickly caught the attention of the Bayelsa government, a Southern state in Nigeria, that invited her for the prestigious National Sports Festival.
Two years later, she cemented her position in the National Wrestling team and has maintained the spot, being a regular in continental tournaments.
“My first medal was a bronze in 2009,” she told Olympic Channel while competing at the 2019 African Games in Rabat.
“And then 2010, I started winning, then every other African championship I win gold, gold, gold…All African Games gold, gold, gold…”
She dominated 59kg, was unrivalled in the 63kg, before stepping up to her current 68kg, winning a record 10 African titles across the weights.
Oborududu has won all African titles apart from 2012 when she skipped the continental event for London 2012, the first of her three Olympic appearances.
2 – Fighting against the odds
As Oborududu made great strides in her career she met some opposition at home, while some people around her doubted her potential.
Her parents were against their daughter practicing the combat sport, regardless of Nigeria’s rich tradition of wrestling.
“When I was growing, my parents used to tell me wrestling is for boys and not for girls,” she recalled in an interview with Olympic Channel.
“But when I saw female wrestlers shining in the sport and traveling outside the country, I said I want to be traveling like them, I want to do this thing [wrestling].”
Even as she became a household name in Nigerian wrestling, it took some convincing to show her potential.
“A lot of people would see me and tell [me], ‘you are not a wrestler; you don’t look like one.’”
But her coaches encouraged her, and she also believed in her ability.
“I kept doing it for me and my coaches. They believed. Whenever I went to the Worlds, Olympics they always encouraged me that, ‘Blessing the best is yet to come. You just need to focus, because you are strong, you are young, you can make it’. This is what has kept me going for the past 10-12 years.”
3 – Her gold medal celebration went viral
At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, the 34-year-old finally won the gold that had eluded her in two previous attempts.
Oborududu held on for a slim 4-3 victory over her Canadian opponent Danielle Lappage.
She strode around the mat in a delirium of joy, rolling down, kissing the mat, and praying.
She then ran off to one of her coaches who carried her around the mat as they celebrated her biggest career win then.
That celebration went viral.
4 – Inspired by another Nigerian with an Olympic wrestling medal
Officially, Oborududu is the first Nigerian to win an Olympic medal in wrestling
But another Nigerian had in fact won gold at the Olympics, 21 years ago.
Daniel Igali, who also hails from Bayelsa state, won 69kg freestyle gold at Sydney 2000.
He won in it for Canada.
Igali switched nationality in 1998, and is the current president of Nigerian Wrestling Federation and is Oborududu’s idol.
In fact, Igali’s Olympic moment has been a huge source of inspiration for the former world number two.
“Nigerian wrestling is special because we always want to win, we want to be number one in the world, number two [at worst]. And our president Igali, is an Olympic champion. And when he told us about himself and how he won it, that is what every wrestler wishes for, be in the Olympics and to win,” she said.
“Sometimes when we watch the Olympic video of our president Daniel Igali, how he received his medal, how he was crying. You know everything that happened at the Olympics, that is our desire, we want to be like him. Everybody in the team wants to be Olympic champion.”
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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