Nigeria might be within grasp of a historic first-ever appearance in the Winter Olympics, but the three members of the Super Eagles women’s bobsled team have bigger goals than simply qualifying to race next year in Pyeongchang.
Make no mistake, this is not a sequel to Cool Runnings, the Hollywood hit movie that immortalized the Jamaican bobsled team’s winter fantasy.
Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga will not be heading to February’s Winter Games just to be a feel-good side story — they are looking for a medal.
No African nation has ever competed in an Olympic bobsled event, and for this trio of trailblazing Nigerian women, getting to the Winter Games is where their journey begins, not ends.
They took a big step toward that goal this week in Calgary, Canada, by completing the fifth of their required five qualifying races on the same track that the Jamaican bobsled team shot to global fame on at the 1988 Winter Games.
“We have goals,” Adigun, the driver and driving force behind the dream of a Nigerian team, told reporters in a telephone interview. “I know the goal I have as a driver is to drive us to the podium, that’s just the competitor in me.”
“Realistically, the goals we set were for the program,” she said. “A lot of our goals have been met just establishing this entire entity, starting this process and making our way to the Games.”
“Obviously, the bigger goal is to just be as competitive as we can and obviously shoot for the podium,” she added.
Although the Nigerians have achieved the qualifying standard, there is still work to be done.
Countries hoping to race in Pyeongchang, South Korea, must be in the top 40 of the global rankings on Jan. 14 after seven Bobsled World Cup races.
“It is not possible for any team to qualify for the Olympic Games this early,” International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) North American Cup coordinator Nicola Minichiello told reporters in an e-mail. “If we base their results on last year’s rankings, the team are likely to qualify. However, this will not be confirmed until much closer to the time.”
While they have a little farther to go, they have come a long way.
The reality of competing in South Korea began in a Texas garage in 2014, when Adigun, born in the US to Nigerian parents, made her dream start to take shape by hammering together a makeshift sled out of wood and scraps that she named “Mayflower.”
A former sprinter who competed in the 100m hurdles for Nigeria at the 2012 London Olympics, Adigun recruited brake operators Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga to make her dream theirs.
The three women have plenty of drive, ambition and pure athletic ability, but were short on cash as the hard work of getting to the Olympics was split between training and fundraising.
Adigun, who fell in love with the sport as a brake operator in the US bobsled program, estimated the Olympic bid to cost about US$150,000.
With the help of fundraising efforts from boot camps to dances, a GoFundMe page, the support of the IBSF emerging nations program and Team Visa, which is backing 52 athletes from 20 countries in 15 sports, the Nigerian bobsledders said they now have enough money to fuel their Olympic dream.
“We did a homecoming in April as a team to just go and introduce ourselves to the country as the team so people would know we are serious,” Adigun said. “This is something we wanted to do for the continent and the country.”
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