World silver medalist, long jumper, Ese Brume, has shifted her focus to the fast approaching All Africa Games in Ghana after she failed to make it to Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2024 World Indoor Championships.
The World Indoor championships will end today, but Team Nigeria’s chances of winning a medal is very slim following the absence of Brume. She could not get a United Kingdom visa to travel from her base in the United States to the venue.
Brume was the only woman on Nigeria’s final entry for the party in Glasgow along with Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, Edosie Ibadin and Dubem Nwachukwu.In the absence of world record holder in the women’s 100m hurdles, Tobi Amusan, Nigeria’s medal hopes were on Brume, as she was seeking to win gold after becoming the first Nigerian long jumper to win medals at the world indoor and outdoor championships. She won bronze at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar and silver at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, USA. She also won silver at the 2022 World Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia.
Speaking with The Guardian from her base in the United States on Friday night, Brume said it was painful to miss such opportunity to display her strength at the World Indoor once again.
“It is not a good experience to train all day for such a big occasion only to watch the event from home. But such is life. I have put the disappointment behind me, and my focus for now is how to win medal for Nigeria at the Africa Games coming up in Ghana,” she stated.
Brume has, however, called on the Sports Ministry and the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) to hasten up all travel arrangement for foreign-based athletes to be in Ghana on time for the All Africa Games.
Two Nigerian medal hopeful, Nwachukwu and Enekwechi, failed to make history on the opening day of the World Indoor Championships, Glasgow, on Friday.
Nwachukwu had raised hopes of a possible appearance in the final when he qualified for the 400m semifinal. But the hopes were dashed in the semis when he finished fifth despite running faster (46.69) than he did in the opening round (46.91). He failed to become the second Nigerian to run in the final of the event since Sunday Bada did in 1997.
On his part, Enekwechi finished sixth in the Shot Put final with his 21.60m effort in an event USA’s Ryan Crouser set a 22.77m Championship record to win.
A medal would have made Enekwechi the first Nigerian man to win a global medal in the event. It was not clear, yesterday, if Nigeria will compete in the men’s 4x400m relay event today.
As at Thursday evening, one of the athletes in the relay team, Sikiru Adeyemi was still struggling to get his UK visa to enable him team up with the trio of Chidi Okezie, Nwachukwu and Ibadin in Glasgow. Nigeria’s 4x400m team is expected to compete against the USA, Poland, Belgium, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Slovak Republic and Kenya today.
