Olympic silver medallist, Blessing Oborududu, World silver medallist, Odunayo Adekuoroye and four others will represent Nigeria in the wrestling event at the forthcoming Paris 2024 Olympic Games, www.aclsports.com reports.
The wrestling event will run from 5th to 11th August 2024 at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris, France.
The team consists of six (5 female and 1 male) wrestlers as well as three coaches.
According to the list available on www.aclsports.com, World Military Champion; Hannah Reuben (76kg) will be making her second appearance at the Olympics. The pair of Christianah Ogunsanya (53kg) and Esther Kolawole (62kg), both African Champions will be making their debuts at the Olympic Games.
African Games silver medallist, Ashton Mutuwa will compete in the 125kg men’s freestyle wrestling as Nigeria’s sole representative in the men’s category.
Leading the coaching crew are 14x African Champion and Commonwealth Games Champion, Victor Kodei; UWW instructor, Purity Akuh, and Happiness Burutu.
President of Nigeria Wrestling Federation, Daniel Igali revealed that the wrestlers are in good shape and will put up a better performance at this year’s Olympics.
The Olympic Champion said the athletes are not going to Paris to make up numbers but to win medals for the country.
“The Nigeria Wrestling Federation is very serious, the athletes have been in camp training for a couple of weeks before attending the Pre-Olympic tournament in Madrid, Spain. In my view, the athletes are battle-prepared.
“The athletes won’t be going to Paris to participate but to compete and you know when someone competes is for medals. The Federation is hoping that if we compete very well the medals will come, if you would recall, wrestling gave Nigeria her only silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and we intend to rescue the country again,” Igali said.
Nigeria wrestlers are currently in Germany for the final phase of the training tour ahead of the Tokyo 2024 Olympic Games.
