By Kehinde Olusegun.
Background.
The 33rd Olympics Games officially kicked off July 26 in Paris, a hundred years after the city last hosted the games in 1924.
The modern Olympics was established out of a desire to revive the tradition of athletic competition in ancient Greece that had been dormant for 1500 years.
The modern Olympic games was founded by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French man who formed the International Olympic Committee in 1894. Coubertin set out on a quest to give French children what British students already had: sport in education. By the age of 25, he had become a leader of French education reform.
At the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, he organised the world’s first Congress on Physical Education and began to build the international network of educators, politicians, aristocrats, commerce, culture and sport who would help him fulfil his Olympic dream. Five years later, on 23 June 1894, in the grand amphitheatre of the Sorbonne University, 2,000 people rose in acclamation of his proposal to revive the Olympic Games. …. And from it the Olympic movement was born “uniting all nations in friendship and peace in the world’s greatest celebration through sport.”
The first modern Olympic games took place in its ancient birthplace, Greece from April 6 to 15 1896.
From about 200 athletes from 14 Nations that participated in the first Olympiad, the games have grown in scope to 32 sport and 10,500 Olympians attending Paris 2024 from 206 Countries and Territories. There are over 1300 accredited journalists and media technicians covering the games, about 15 million people are expected to attend the various events and broadcast is set to reach over a billion people worldwide.
SAHEL STANDARD celebrates past and present Olympians from different countries across the world who have achieved landmark achievements through their participation in the Olympic games and have embodied the Olympic Spirit.
Today, we showcase Falilat Ogunkoya-Osheku a former track and field athlete who holds the distinction of becoming the first Nigerian to win an individual track and field medal at the Olympic games.
Born on 5 December 1968 in Ode Lemo, Ogun State, Nigeria.
Ogunkoya won a number of national championships, including a gold medal in 1996 in the 400 metres, gold in the 200 metres and 400 m in 1998, and gold again in 1999 and 2001 in the 400 m. At the 1987 All Africa Games in Nairobi she won the silver medal in the 200 m. In 1995 at the All-Africa Games in Harare she won the silver in the 400 m, and at the 1999 Games in Johannesburg she won a gold medal in the 400 m.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the United States, Ogunkoya won a bronze medal in the 400 m, behind Marie-José Pérec of France and Cathy Freeman of Australia, in a personal best and African record of 49.10, which is currently the twelfth fastest of all time. It marked the first time a Nigerian athlete won a medal in an individual track and field event.
She was also part of the quartet that won silver in the 4 X 400m in the same 1996 Olympics. In 1998, she won gold in the Goodwill games – a feat no Nigerian has ever achieved; in the World Cup of athletics now called IAAF World Championships. she also won gold in 400m and silver in 200m.
Sahel Standard salutes this trailblazer who, through determination and hard work continues to inspire generations of young and aspiring Olympians.
