Gallant Para Athletes Return Home In Glory From Tunis Grand Prix

The Nigerian four-man team to the Tunis 2019 Para Athletics Grand Prix returned home to Nigeria Wednesday night with pride as they hauled a total of 10 medals.

The team, which departed Nigeria on Tuesday, June 24, for the three days competition, which served as the beginning of the qualifying series for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, touched down at about 8pm aboard Turkish Airline and headed straight for Kenneth Minimah Hostel, National Stadium, Lagos.

Though disappointed that there were no ceremonies to appreciate them on arrival, they joyed in their outstanding performance at the event, with every member of the team having at least one gold and one silver medal to his or her name with new comer, Mmadubuike Ifeanyichukwu setting a new world record in the T46 200m event.

He finished with gold in all of the dash events – 100m, 200m and 400m – with his 22.20 seconds run erasing the world record of 24.45 seconds.

Uwak Unyime Christopher also went twice to the podium for gold in 200m and silver in 100m.

The duo of Rio 2016 Paralympics gold medalists and world record holders also proved their mettle with medals in multiple events as Flora Ugwunwa won the gold in her regular F58 javelin and silver in F58, while Lauritta Onye made it three in her F40 category with gold in javelin and silver in both shot put and Discus.

Though the Nigeria Para Athletics Federation had planned to take 20 athletes to the Paralympic qualifiers to begin the hunt for tickets to the Paralympic Games, they could only make the trip with just the four athletes for reasons of paucity of funds.

The allocation of Paralympics slots is calculated by the number of athletes in the A Grade ranking of the International Paralympic Committee derived from performances at international events.

The quest of Team Nigeria is made more difficult by the fact that they were not able to attend major international competitions since after the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.

They however have opportunities to made good their chances if they take more athletes to the coming events in Paris, Dubai and Morocco and perform as well as they have done at the Grand Prix in Tunisia.

Flora Ugwunwa says she is very certain of the capacity of the talents available to meet the mark.

“There are hundreds of physically challenged athletes who can do as well as we have just done in Tunisia to garner points for Paralympics qualifying tickets. The only problem is funding, that’s why we had to leave many other highly talented athletes behind.. You can imagine just four athletes earning 10 medals. If we have more of our athletes competing, we would achieve higher ranking to increase our slots. We are appealing to the government, corporate community and individual philanthropists to support us,” Ugwunwa said.