Simidele Adeagbo is placing Nigeria on the map once more.
Over the weekend, she made historical past as the primary African athlete to compete in Bobsleigh on the BMW IBSF World Championship in Winterburg, Germany. Nigeria additionally turned the primary African nation represented in bobsleigh at a World Championships within the 100-year historical past of IBSF.
Bobsleigh, also called bobsled, is a staff winter sport the place timed runs are made in a gravity-powered sledge down small, winding, banked, icy tracks. The Worldwide Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation governs bobsleigh competitions the world over (IBSF).
The Nigerian-Canadian skeleton racer competed within the 2018 Winter Olympics, the place she completed twentieth and have become Nigeria and Africa’s first feminine skeleton athlete. She additionally made historical past as the primary black feminine Olympian within the sport. Extra just lately, in 2022, she received the ladies’s mono bob occasion within the 2022 EuroCup, turning into the primary athlete from Africa to win a global sledge race.
“This weekend I’ll make historical past for Nigeria as the first African athlete to compete in bobsleigh on the BMW IBSF World Chams,” she wrote on her X account.
That is the FIRST time ever the continent of Africa shall be represented in bobsleigh at a World Champs within the 100 years since @ibsfsliding was based. I need to take a second to have fun this important barrier that took a century to interrupt. Too typically our historic contributions should not acknowledged, undervalued, and forgotten. In order we have fun BHM, I’m honored to jot down one other chapter within the new way forward for sport.
This primary shall be eternally recorded in historical past, paving the way in which for better entry and inclusion within the primarily Eurocentric, male-dominated sport of bobsleigh. This historic second is a testomony to laborious work and dreaming greater than others suppose is sensible As I break this barrier on the ice, by way of the work of the @simisleighsfoundation, I proceed to interrupt the limitations that restrict girls and women’ alternatives to succeed in their full potential.
Watch the golden second beneath:
