No Medals Yet for Nigeria.- Team Nigeria kicks off to a Poor Start but Remains Hopeful

Team Nigeria has had a mix of
victory and losses in the first few
days at the London 2012
Olympics and has earned no
medal yet.
In Table Tennis, the entire group
of male and female players have
crashed out.
Segun Toriola and Quadri Aruna
representing the men, and
Olufunke Oshonaike and Offiong
Edem, the two female players
lost to their opponents in the
first round of games.
In spite of winning his first two
games, Aruna, 23, lost 2-4 in his
second round game to Turkey’s
Bora Vang while Segun Toriola
lost 4-1 to Swedish Persson
Jorgen in his second outing.
Oshoniake also won her
preliminary round match, before
losing in the first round later in
the day while Edem lost 4-2 to
Egypt’s Dina Meshref.
Jonathan Akinyemi, Nigeria’s
first ever Olympic Games
competitor in the canoeing event
lost the bid to make it to the
semifinals round of the men’s
kayak K1 event on Sunday.
Akinyemi finished 20th in his
first run and 21st in the second
run to be out of the Games,
having missed a place among the
15 athletes who made it to the
next round.
In Boxing, Nigeria’s Muideen
Akanji failed to make it to the last
16 of the men’s boxing
middleweight, following a 15-6
defeat at the hands of Ireland’s
captain, Darren O’Neil, on
Saturday.
And on Monday, Team Nigeria
had another poor performance
when one of their boxers,
Lukmon Lawal lost his round of
16 Light Heavyweight bout 19-7
points to Ihab Almatbouli of
Jordan, crashing out of the
Games.
However, the Nigerian Basketball
team, D’Tigers managed to
defeat Tunisia 60-56 points in
the men’s basketball opening
match which brought some
consolation to Nigeria. But sadly,
they lost their second
match against Lithuania
yesterday.
Meanwhile, South Africa has
secured Africa’s first gold medal
at the London 2012 Olympics.
Cameron van der Burgh, on
Sunday, secured the gold medal
in the men’s 100m breaststroke.
Despite the seemingly dull start,
we are proud of our Nigerian
athletes who have put in so
much time, resources and
training to compete at the
games. We acknowledge the
athletes who put in their
personal financial resources to
ensure that they get the
necessary training;
we acknowledge their zeal and
passion for the game and we say
we are proud of them.
Like the proverbial saying “All
hope is not lost”, Nigeria still has
more chances to bring victory to
Nigeria in the remaining games.
We wish Team Nigeria the very
best and we remain hopeful.