By Uzor Odigbo
Reigning African Games 400m champion, Chidi Okezie was the hero for Team Nigeria after inspiring the 4x400m mixed and men’s 4x400m relay teams to book their tickets to this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, France at the 2024 World Athletics Relays in Nassau, Bahamas.
Okezie ran incredible 44.78 split leg (third) to ensure the team grabbed the second automatic ticket behind USA.
The quartet of Samuel Ogazi, Ella Onojuvwevwo who also ran a 50.45 split leg (second), Okezie and Elo Joseph ran 3:13.79 to come second behind the USA who ran a new 3:11.52 Championships record to win the heat.
Barely two hours later, Okezie returned once again to ensure a second Paris Olympics ticket was in the bag on the first day of competition.
The USA-based, 30 year old ran an incredible 44.46 split leg to anchor the team to Paris.
The quartet of Dubem Nwachukwu, Dubem Amene who also ran a 44.82 split leg (second), Sikiru Adeyemi and Okezie ran 3:01.70 personal season’s best to come second behind Belgium in the heat.
While the mixed relay team will be making an immediate return to the Olympics after appearaing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the men’s 4x400m team will be competing for the first since 2004 when the quartet of James Godday, Musa Audu, Saul Weigopwa and Enefiok Udo-Obong ran 3:00.90 to win the bronze medal in Athens, Greece, four years after winning gold in Sydney, Australia.
All eyes will thus be on Okezie on Sunday in the finals of both the 4x400m mixed relay team and the men’s 4x400m team as they fight for the $40,000 top prize money on offer.
There was a Nigeria no show in the women’s 4x400m following the injury suffered by Omolara Ogunmakinju on the eve of the competition. Her absence means only three ladies were available for a race that must be prosecuted by four.
Meanwhile, the men and women’s 4x100m relay teams will have another chance of fighting for places among the 16 teams that will compete for podium appearances at the Olympics when they compete in the reperchage round.
The women’s team led by Favour Ofili will run in the third heat of the reperchage round with host, Bahamas, China and Brazil their main rivals for the two automatic tickets on offer.
For the men, the team led by Udodi Onwuzurike will hope to finish among the top two in the second heat which has Ghana, Turkey, Netherlands, France and South Korea among some of the hurdles they will have to scale
