Flora Ugwunwa made the podium at her first appearance at the Paralympics for Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Flora Ugwunwa inspired a 1-2-3 for the African continent in the women’s F54 Javelin throw on Day 6 of the ongoing Rio 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil.

The 32-year old was in a class of her own on Tuesday as she went on to erase Tunisian Hania Aidi’s World Record (WR) of 18.86m set at the IPC World Championships in Doha last year.

Ugwunwa furthered the mark by almost 2m, throwing an impressive 20.25m in her third attempt to also shatter Liwan Yang’s Paralympic Record (PR) of 17.89m set at the London Games four years ago.

So massive was Ugwunwa’s throw that former WR holder Aidi had to set a Personal Best (PB) of 18.88m to take Silver, while South Africa’s Ntombizanele Situ won the Bronze medal with a PB of 17.90m. Former PR holder Yang was relegated to 4th place with 17.52m.

Ugwunwa was a GOLD medallist at the 2015 African Games in Congo Brazzaville, and her feat in Rio earned Nigeria its second medal in Track and Field, following Laurrita Onye’s GOLD medal run in the women’s Shot put on Sunday.

Ugwunwa’s win takes Nigeria’s tally of GOLD medals to seven, and is the country’s tenth medal overall at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games.

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Yemi Galadima is a Senior Sportswriter and Editor at Making of Champions. She has a bias for Athletics and was previously a Sports Reporter at the National Mirror, where she hosted a weekly column ‘On the Track with Yemi Olus’ for over two years. A self-acclaimed ‘athletics junkie’, she has covered national and international events live, such as the African Athletics Championships, African Games, Olympics and World Athletics Championships. She also freelances for World Athletics.

3 COMMENTS

  1. thanks very much for ur updates but I Flora Ugwunwa did not like the pix u use for my own competition update. that pix is outdated do pls use my competition pix which is recent pix not doha pix. again the pix of the person throwing javeline is not mine rather its south african girl’s picture

    • Hi Flora, apologies for not using a recent picture of yours. We will update the article with a picture from the Rio Games. Glad to know thatyou are following our updates. Congratulations on winning a GOLD medal for Nigeria.

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