By Kehinde Okeowo
Nigeria’s dream of winning a gold medal in the on-going Tokyo Olympics might have been truncated with the loss of Blessing Oborududu in the women’s 68kg freestyle wrestling final.
The 32-year-old Nigerian lost to 28–year old American , Tanyra Mensah-Stock who dominated the encounter and won the fight by 4-1 points.
The outcome of the fight means the American takes the gold medal , while her Nigerian counterpart settles for silver medal.
This is Nigeria second medal after Ese Brume won a bronze earlier at the long jump event.
Meanwhile, another Nigerian wrestler , Aminat Adeniyi who won a commonwealth gold in 58kg women’s freestyle wrestling crashed out after losing her rounds of 8 fight to Iryna Koliadenko of Ukraine via a fall.
Nigeria has now moved up to the 64th position on the medals table with the acquisition of a silver and bronze medal , while China still leads the medal table with 32 gold medals . They are followed by United States with 24 gold medals, while the host , Japan are third with 19 gold medals.