Nigeria’s 4x100m women relay team, Thursday, kept alive the country’s hopes of picking a medal at the ongoing Rio Olympics.
The quartet of Gloria Asumnu, Blessing Okagbare, Jennifer Madu and Agnes Osazuwa qualified as second from Semi-final 2 with a Season’s Best (SB) of 42.55s.
European giants, Germany, clinched top spot with a time of 42.18s with Trinidad & Tobago in third.
Running in Lane 8, Asumnu started the race for the Nigerians before handing over the baton to Okagbare, who consolidated a strong position for Nigeria then handed to Madu before Osazuwa finished it up.
Interestingly, the performance from the ladies is a sigh of relief for the country, on a day where the other athletes in action had a seemingly disappointing outing, with both Stephen Mozia and Doreen Amata failing to qualify for the finals in both the shot put and high jump respectively.
Okagbare and the rest of the team will hope to give their best shot and aim for a new SB in the final, if they’re to have a chance at a podium finish and win Nigeria’s first medal in Rio.
Meanwhile, USA’s women’s quartet has been given a chance to run for a spot in the final, after they appeared to have faltered with their baton exchange in the semis. The American team made an appeal to the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) which cleared them to have a re-run later in the day.
However, in the first semi-final, there wasn’t any drama as Jamaica were clear winners, racing to the finish line in an SB of 41.79s, with Great Britain coming second in 41.93s and Ukraine third in 42.49s.
Canada got one of the two fastest losing spots after clocking 42.70s, while China who had earlier gotten the last spot will have to wait for the outcome of USA’s re-run later in the day.
