Team Nigeria certainly had a Day 5 to savour at the ongoing Rio 2016 Paralympic Games, raking in more laurels to move up to ninth place on the medals table.
Competing in both the Powerlifting and Athletics events, Nigeria won two GOLD medals to take their overall tally in the competition to nine.
Ndidi Nwosu led the GOLD rush after she surprisingly won the women’s -73kg Powerlifting event with her very last lift, equaling a Paralympics Record of 140kg to pip her French counterpart to it.
As if that was a sign of more things to come, Nwosu’s compatriot, Bose Omolayo showed why there was much faith reposed on her, going on to break her own World Record (WR) to win GOLD in women’s -78kg Powerlifting in event.
Competing in men’s -80kg Powerlifting, Tolu-Lope Taiwo narrowly missed out on a podium placement after finishing 5th with a mark of 200kg.
In Athletics, Lovina Onyegbule and her guide Chidozie Kalu won heat 2 of women’s 200m -T11 in Round 1, however moments later she was disqualified for a likely lane infringement and didn’t get a chance to run in the semi final.
While in men’s Discus -F11, Friday Aibangbe finished 9th with his best mark of 30.02m.
By all means it was a good Day 5 that saw Nigeria move up the medals table and now in the first ten, and with more actions coming up on Day 6, the country could even up further on the log.
