Uhunoma Naomi Osazuwa put up a sterling display at the just concluded Nigerian Championships in Warri to win the Heptathlon in a new National Record (NR) of 6106 points.
Over two days, Osazuwa led in five of her seven events, raking in points that was enough to earn her title. Oluwakemi Francis finished 2nd with 5406 points, as Moe Sasegbon placed 3rd with 5353 points.
Coming into the Championship, the All-Africa Games Silver medallist had a Personal Best (PB) of 6049 points and she will be delighted having raised it further by an additional 57 points to that tally, which makes her the country’s best ever Heptathlete.
From the first day of their events, Osazuwa stormed into an early lead when she took the 100m hurdles in a time of 13.71s, gaining 1020 points, but Francis didn’t make it easy for her, as she was the only other athlete to win any of the events, sticking closely to her with 2nd place finishes that made her also a contender.
Interestingly, Osazuwa had an unassailable lead coming into their last task, the 800m where she pushed on for the record, but it was Francis who executed a perfect race to win in 2:17.02, gaining 864 points in the process. The 734 points Osazuwa earned finishing 2nd was enough to etch her name further in the record books.
When Making of Champions caught up with her to ask how she felt setting a new NR again, she told us: “it feels great, this is just my first season after taking two complete years off, so I didn’t even expect to come this far after my first year training. It feels amazing to have been able to put up that type of score after just a few months of getting back into this… I am very happy, very pleased”
Osazuwa will be representing Nigeria at the World Champs, and she acknowledged that her recent victory would enhance her confidence and performances in events that she is not so good at. “It definitely is,” she said. “Especially because the weaker events. The events that I am weaker at: the Javelin, the 800m, things like that picked up the slack for me. Normally I rely on my hurdles and my 200m, and my Long Jump isn’t better. It was nice that my weaker events were able to pick up the slack and I was able to PB even with like poor events, a poor day one even in comparison to what I would have liked to score.
Only Osazuwa set a new National Record in all the events at the trials, but she also noted that the sport is a difficult one to participate in as it entails a lot.
“Heptathlon is difficult you know in kind of developing countries because you need a lot of resources to do it. I don’t think it’s not possible to have a masters type of score, it’s just the resources preventing a lot of people from getting involved.
“Even just our event, we have the smallest field, it’s only the five of us. Two of us are foreign based. I think the Heptathlon, the biggest challenge I guess preventing developing countries is the resources and being able to have facilities to throw Javelin and all these extra stuff. It is a difficult competition…period.
I am looking forward to going after the African Record, it’s like 6423, I am looking forward to making it a goal of mine… to achieve it in a few years’ time.”
At the moment, Osazuwa is focused on the World Champs, where she intends to meet the standards for next year’s Rio Olympic Games. It could be just a matter of time before she realises her target of surpassing the African Record.
