Friday 16 September 2016

MUST READ: Nigeria's Paralympic team has been grabbing medals left, right and centre.


The Paralympic games will be ending soon, here are five things you may not know about the team.
1. A gold medal has been won by a Nollywood actress

When Lauritta Onye threw a shot put 8.40m she not only won gold but broke a word record.

The Nigerian Paralympic gold medallist is also known as…. Laury White.

Under that name she starred in the Nollywood film Lords of Money in 2015.

Her performance skills were put to good use on Sunday night when she celebrated her victory in acrobatic style in front of the cameras.

2. More medals than the Olympic team

Nigeria's Paralympians already have eight golds, two silvers and one bronze medal.

That's compared to
 Nigeria's Olympic team which only took home one bronze for football last month.

At the half-way point Nigeria's Paralympic team is 11th in the medal table and top among African countries, whereas the Olympians were joint 78th by the end.

3. It's not the first time
At London 2012 the country won 13 medals at the Paralympic Games and not one single medal in the Olympics. And again they came home with more medals in 2008, 2004, 2000 and 1996.

A point not missed by some Nigerians on Twitter:

Before this Games, the former director of the National Sports Commission went as far as to say that he hoped the Paralympians would "erase the shame of the dismal showing at the Olympic Games"

4. Power-lifting dominates


Four of Nigeria's twelve medals is not in power-lifting - so far it has five Paralympic power-lifting golds, two silvers and one bronze. That's added to 15 other power-lifting gold medals since Nigeria started competing in 1992. But then the numbers are against the other Paralympians - 14 of the 23 Nigerian competitors are power-lifters.

This doesn't appear to be by accident.

5 Serial record breaker

Weightlifter Lucy Ejike broke a world record on Sunday to win gold with a lift of 142kg in the women's under-61kg event.


It is the third time she has broken a world record - in Beijing in 2008 she broke two during the under-48kg event.
The 38-year-old wheelchair user has won three gold medals since she started competing in 2000.

-Culled BBC additional words added by me.

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