Thirty years after a few men from Jamaica made bobsledding history, a new geographical barrier will fall for the sport at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Three women from Nigeria will compete in the women’s bobsled, becoming the first athletes from Africa to qualify for the Olympics in the sport. They also will be the first Nigerian athletes ever to compete in the Winter Olympics.
The three women are driver Seun Adigun and brakemen Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga. To qualify for the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, the team needed to complete five qualifying races.
They finished No. 5 this week in Calgary, and will represent their country in South Korea.
“We are from a continent that would never imagine sliding down ice at 80 or 90 miles per hour,” Adigun said to BBC in March. “The idea of getting people to take to that in itself is empowering.”
Like the men from Jamaica who became the inspiration for the movie “Cool Runnings,” the Nigerian bobsled team has a track and field background. Adigun competed for Nigeria in the 2012 London Games as a hurdler and ran at the University of Houston. Onwumere won two medals as a sprinter at the 2015 African Games, and Omeoga was a sprinter at Minnesota.
Their journey to PyeongChang actually began in Houston, with a wooden sled they dubbed “The Maeflower.” They started a GoFundMe to help raise money for the process, and signed a sponsorship deal with Visa this past week.
The trio might not be alone when they walk into the stadium for the opening ceremonies in February. Simi Adeagbo, a four-time All-American at Kentucky, is trying to qualify for the 2018 Games in the skeleton.
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