Tough hurdles for Nigerian athletes ahead Paris 2024 Olympics

Nigerian athletes who wish to get on board the train to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games are required to do a little more than have been asked of them by World Athletics for the trip to the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary in August following the release of the entry standard for the Quadrennial Games.

According to www.sportsnow.com, the qualification system will be based on a dual pathway, with 50 percent of athletes qualifying through entry standards and the remaining 50 percent through World Rankings.
While in some events like the men’s 100m (10.00), 200m (20.16), and 400m (45.00), the athletes have been given the same hurdle they will have to scale to get to Budapest next August.

For the 100m, the likes of Favour Ofili, Grace Nwokocha, Rosemary Chukwuma and Tima Godbless have been asked to run at least a hundreth of a second faster (11.07) than the 11.08 hurdle they will need to scale to enter Budapest in August.

In the 200m, Ofili should have little difficulty running inside the 22.60 mark she has already scaled to book her ticket to the Worlds in Budapest. The Paris 2024 Games’ standard is 22.57.

In the 400m, Patience Okon-George will have to turn back the hand of the clock to 2015 to run inside 51 seconds again if she is desirous of making it to Paris while Imaobong Nse Uko must join the 50 seconds runners club to make the trip to Paris.

Tobi Amusan and Ese Brume should have little difficulty running 12.77 or leaping 6.86m respectively to make a return to the Olympic stage. While Amusan will be seeking to improve on his fourth placed status at the Tokyo Olympics, Brume will be aiming for the gold after striking bronze just a year ago.

In some of the other field events, intending travellers to Paris will either need to break or equal the national record or move close to it to be able to secure tickets.

In the men’s long jump, aspiring athletes must equal the 8.27m Nigeria record set by Yusuf Ali in 1989 to confirm their tickets, while in the triple jump, they must be within four centimetres (17.22m) of the 17.26m national record Ajayi Agbebaku set to win the World Universities Games gold in Edmonton, Canada in July, 1983.

Ruth Usoro will have to improve her 14.50m national record by five centimetres (14.55m) to make her debut at the Olympics after negligence by athletics officials deprived her of that opportunity at the Tokyo Games.

In the high jump, Temitope Adeshina and Esther Isa will need to jump two centimetres higher than the 1.95m national record set by Doreen Amata in 2008 and 2011 to secure places on the flight to Paris.

Meanwhile, the qualification period is between July 1 2023 to June 30 2024, while the deadline for entries is July 8, 2024.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will hold from July 26 to August 11.