Team Nigeria’s Ejike wins bronze at paralympic games

Nigeria’s World and Paralympic Games record holder in the women -61kg para Powerlifting, Lucy Ejike, was yesterday afternoon pushed two steps down to settle for bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

Ejike, who successfully listed 130kg in her first attempt, lost the pole position to old time rival, Amalia Perez of Mexico, who lifted 131kg in her final attempt to improve on the 125 and 126kg first and second attempts.

Kuziena Ruza of Uzbekistan took the silver with her final lift of 130kg after failing to lift 126kg in her first and second attempt. Ejike booked 135kg in her second and final chance but was flagged red by all three judges on both occasions.

Earlier in the day, Team Nigeria’s entry in the -71kg class, Innocent Nnamdi, also failed to record any score having failed to lift the 200kg he booked in all three attempts.

Reigning world and Paralympic champion, Guskon Bonnie Bunyau of Malaysia retained his title with a final 228kg lift while Egypt’s Atria Mohammed had silver with 191kg in his final attempt, leaving the bronze for Yule Micky of Great Britain who started with 180kg and finished with 182kg.

Speaking to Sportstalkafrica.com after the event, Nnamdi said he still cannot come to terms with his failed attempts but sees it as one of those things in sports.

“I just cannot tell what happened. I used to lift 210, 215kg in training so my attempt at 200 wasn’t too much for me.

“As you can see from all of us top four in the world, it’s only the champion that scaled through. I booked 200kg because I did not want to start chasing from behind with low number.

“You can see that others in the top four also booked 205 and 206 seeing that Moshin Rasool of Iraq and Hu Peng of China, both also in the top four, booked 206 and 208, respectively, and we all had bad lifts, giving room for the lower lifters to take the second and third positions with lower weights,” he said.