Nigerian sprinting sensation Blessing Okagbare will along with four others, be inducted into the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) Sports Hall of Fame on October 27th and 28th.
Okagbare, alongside Antonio Davis (Basketball), Seth Joyner (Football), Cynthia Ruelas-Macias (Volleyball) and Paul Stankowski (Golf), will be inducted into the 15th class of the UTEP Athletics Hall of Fame at a ceremony holding at the Larry K. Durham Sports Center on Friday. They will also be honoured at the UTEP football team’s home game on Saturday.
Okagbare claimed double NCAA titles in the 100m and Long Jump in her senior year at UTEP, making her the first athlete in collegiate history to achieve such a feat. She also won the 60m and Long Jump at the 2010 NCAA Indoor Championships, setting a Meet Record of 6.87m in the latter. Her outstanding achievements saw her being nominated for the Bowerman Award – the highest honor given to collegiate Track and Field student-athletes.
Okagbare has enjoyed an outstanding career which saw her win Bronze in the Long Jump at her maiden Olympics outing in Beijing in 2008. It was later upgraded to Silver after Russia’s Tatiana Lebedeva was stripped of the medal following a re-analysis of her samples from the Games, which tested positive to a prohibited substance.
She also won two medals in the Long Jump and 200m respectively at the 2013 World Championships in Moscow, and then struck GOLD in the sprint double at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, becoming the fourth woman in history to achieve such.
Okagbare won GOLD in the 4x200m at the 2015 IAAF World Relays in the Bahamas and has several continental titles to her name.
