Another Nigerian Athlete, Simidele, in Final Race to Qualify for Winter Olympic

Nigerian athlete, Simidele Adeagbo, is just one race away from qualifying for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, in the sport of skeleton. If she is successful, she will make Olympic history as a member of the first Nigerian contingent to one of the world’s most prestigious competitive sporting events. The skeleton is a winter sliding sport in which a person rides a small sled, known as a skeleton bobsled or sleigh, down a frozen track while lying face down.

Today in Lake Placid, New York, Adeagbo will compete in her final qualifying race.

If she gets in as one of the qualifiers to be announced from January 14 to 16, she will be joining the three Nigerian women, Driver Seun Adigun and brakemen Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga who recently became the first athletes from Africa to qualify for the bobsled event of the winter Olympics.

Adeagbo is currently ranked 84th in the world. In order to qualify in skeleton for PyeongChang, an athlete has to be the top athlete in the sport from their country and to have competed in five races on three different tracks in the last two seasons.

They are Nigeria’s first and biggest-ever Winter Olympics representation in PyeongChang!

Adeagbo is currently ranked 84th in the world. In order to qualify in skeleton for PyeongChang, an athlete has to be the top athlete in the sport from their country and to have competed in five races on three different tracks in the last two seasons.

As a four-time NCAA All American and triple jump record holder for the University of Kentucky, Adeagbo competed in her last major track and field competition in June of 2008. She had nursed the ambition of competing at the Olympics but was unsuccessful at the trials and thus hung up her boots.