Nigeria Wins Africa Junior Athletics Championship

AFN President, Chief Solomon Ogba



Team Nigeria Sunday completed the hat-trick of clinching the continent’s three major track and field titles, capping it with the Africa Junior Athletics Championship in Mauritius.

Nigeria won the 11th Africa Junior championship which ended Sunday in the Indian Ocean Island of Mauritius with nine gold, seven silver and three bronze medals to push arch rivals South Africa to the second place that collected seven gold, nine silver and eight bronze medals.

Ethiopia placed third with seven gold, seven silver and eight bronze while Egypt placed fourth with five gold, five silver and two bronze medals.

Team Nigeria’s senior athletes last year in Port Novo, Benin Republic won the Senior Athletics Championships and followed up earlier this year with another victory in the maiden African Youth Championship in Warri.
Nigeria attended the competition with 26 athletes and 9 officials.

Nkiruka Uwakwe was the tournament’s best, after winning the 200m gold on Sunday in 24.21secs to bring her tally to three gold in the championship.

She was part of Nigeria’s 4x100m relay that won gold as well as the 4x400m victorious team.

Before Uwakwe’s victory in the 200m event, all eyes were on Ese Brume.

She was part of the gold winning 4x100m relay team before picking a gold in the long jump event on Saturday.

However, her dream of two individual gold medals could not materialise in the triple jump where she finished second behind Lerato Sechele of Lesotho.
While Sechele jumped 12.62m for the gold, Brume leapt 12.52m to settle for the silver. She set a new personal best in the process.