Commonwealth champion Blessing Oborududu on Monday made history as the first Nigerian to reach the final of a wrestling event at the Olympics, after recording an impressive 7-2 victory against London 2012 Olympics bronze medallist Battsetseg Soronzonbold of Mongolia in a semi-final clash. Her qualification guarantees Team Nigeria a silver or gold medal in Tokyo Olympics The impressive Nigerian, a 10-time African champion will face Americas’ Tamyra Mensah-Stock in Tuesday’s 68kg women’s freestyle final, after the World champion overpowered Ukraine’s Alla Cherkasova 10-4 in the first semi-final. Oborodudu won a gold medal at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games in the 68kg women’s freestyle wrestling event, defeating Canada’s Danielle Lappage, and she is optimistic she will achieve a similar feat in Tokyo.

Nigerian top sprinter, Blessing Okagbare has been suspended for testing positive for human growth hormone substance, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said. The anti-doping body disclosed this in a statement, saying the 32-year old Nigerian athlete tested positive for a prohibited substance in an out-of-competition test, days before the Olympics commenced.

The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has announced that Professor Ken Anugweje is the newly appointed head of the Medical and Anti-Doping Commission of AFN. This was announced on Thursday in a statement by AFN President, Tonobok Okowa.

Ten Nigerian athletes have been ruled ineligible to compete at the ongoing 2020 Tokyo Olympics by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), lowering the country’s chances of winning medals. The ban was following the failure of Nigerian officials to ensure athletes met the minimum testing requirements under Rule 15 of the Anti-Doping Rules for ‘Category A’ federations.

The 2020 Summer Olympics (XXXII Olympiad) branded as the Tokyo Olympics has finally kicked off a year after pandemic delay with softball in disaster-hit Fukushima on Wednesday as the Games suffered their first drugs controversy. Japan thrashed Australia 8-1 in the first action of the 2020 Games, which are struggling for public support with Tokyo under a state of emergency following a surge in coronavirus cases. Fans are barred from most of the Olympics and the game took place in front of empty stands at Fukushima, which was ravaged by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011.

Nigeria’s National Basketball team, D’Tigers have stunned the United States team 90-87 in a pre-Olympic friendly game in Las Vegas on Saturday, becoming the first African Nation to beat the US basketball team. D’Tigers pulled the shocker with six NBA players and head coach Mike Helm, while the American team had All-NBA, and All-Star, and max contract players.