Team Nigeria concedes 100m bronze to Jamaica’s Blake
Nigeria came close to winning bronze medal in the men’s 100m, in a race dominated by South Africans. The Nigerian representative Seye Ogunlewe lost the bronze to former world champion Yohan Blake.
It was not the best of 100m races, but it was a good result that saw Africa making a 1-2 finish at the finals of the 100 m dash in Australia.
Akanni Simbine led Henricho Bruintjies in a surprising South Africa’s gold and silver finish at the Commonwealth Games that left Jamaican Yohan Blake pondering where to go from Australia.
The Jamaican 2011 World Champion entered the event as a hot favorite and displayed the common arrogance of world beaters before the event. At the sound of the gun, however, he stumbled early and never caught up with the hot-smoking South African pair.
Simbine who was 5th at the 2016 Olympics won in 10.03 secs while his compatriot Bruintjies returned 10.17 sec.
Blake was 0.02 further back to settle for bronze after a photo finish with upcoming Nigeria’s Seye Ogunlewe.
Nigerian Team officials had to look twice at the photo finish as everybody thought the Nigerian pushed him out of the bronze medal.
But Technical Director of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), Sunday Adeleye conceded defeat explaining that Blake had fragments of his head ahead of Ogunlewe.
“It’s clear. Jamaica got the bronze. We had to look twice and are satisfied,” Adeleye said.
Team Nigeria had won two silver medals on the same night from Table Tennis and Shot put to signal their quest for a better placing on the medals table.