Nigeria women’s national Basketball team sparked off the Nigeria campaign at the Paris 2024 Olympics overcoming the weekend of gloom for Team Nigeria at the Olympics.
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The team defeated the much fancied Australia’s Opal 75-62 Basketball women event to record their first victory in 20 years in the event.
D’Tigress started on a high and opened up a 13 point gap leading 41-28 at halftime. They sustained the energy in the game preventing a late rally from the Aussies.
This virtuoso performance is a light on the dark weekend of blooming results from Paris after their colourful showing at the opening ceremony parade by Team Nigeria led Tobi Amusan on Friday night.
Action began on Saturday with not so pleasant news from the Boxing camp, Aruna Quadri led the Table Tennis exit from the singles event while Super Falcons had their hopes of qualification into the next the football faded.
Aruna Quadri and Olajide Omotayo crashed out of the Table Tennis men’s singles with unexpected losses with Aruna surrendering a 3-0 lead to a 19 year old Romania rookie Eduard Ionescu and got booted out 4-3 .
Olajide Omotayo lost 4-1 to Iran’s Noshad Alamiyan on Saturday while Effiong Edem continued the exit story on Sunday in the women’s singles as she lost 4-1 to Brazil’s Bruna Takahashi in round of 64.
Perhaps the most gory story of the day came off the ring when Cynthia Ogunsemilore was provisionally suspended for doping, allegedly.
Nigeria’s chase for a medal in the event fell on the light shoulder of Adam Olaore in the heavyweight category but the dream of winning Nigeria’s first medal in 28 years in the event got aborted by Kazakhstan’s power puncher Aibek Oralbay in the first round , as Aibek won 5-0 unanimously on all cards of the judges.
The Super Falcons couldn’t do better than they did against Brazil in their first game when they crumbled to Spain with similar results wrapping a Sunday of no results for Team Nigeria.
The victory of the D’Tigress is a reflection of what a typical Nigerian athlete can do on their day.
Against all odds, the D’Tigress impressed, they are the lowest ranked team in the Women Basketball event but they defeated the number three ranked team, in the Opal’s of Australia.
They never let the poor rankings deter them as they went all out to get the needed results to the delights of Nigerians.
This can serve as a reminder to the rest of the men and women representing Nigeria in Paris, that it’s time to put on a brave performance that depicts the true Nigeria spirit in all the events ,going forward.
it’s time for the athletes to go all out, drawing inspiration from the D’Tigress in their respective events.
