A former African queen of the track, Mary Onyali, is on cloud nine following Team Nigeria’s 4×400m women relay team’s qualification for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The Special Assistant to the Minister of Youth and Sports Development who is also an Olympian described the feat attained by the ladies as mission accomplished.
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The former African, Commonwealth and Nigerian 100 & 200m champion said “Team Nigeria’s Olympics qualifications in the relay in female 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m is mission accomplished.
“These championships have taken Team Nigeria upwards in world ranking. Before now, Team Nigeria was in 16th position in the 4x 100m but the time ran at Yaba Tech during the trials moved us up to 14th and in the 4 x400m team Nigeria was 17th but with what was ran on Thursday Nigeria has moved up to 13th in the world.
“I, therefore, want to say a big congratulations to Team Nigeria. We look forward to a superb performance in Tokyo,” said Onyali.
It will be recalled that while the ladies made Nigerians proud, their male compatriots failed to qualify in both 4x100m and 4x400m relay.
Although the male 4×100 team managed to improve their time to 38.59 seconds, it was not enough to qualify them to Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
However, the men’s 4x400m team together with the 4x100m and 4x400m mixed relay teams have a final chance to book their flights to Tokyo at the MOC Relays on Sunday at the Sports ground of Yaba College of Technology, Yaba in Lagos.
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