2025 World Ranking: Rhasidat Adeleke, Yemisi Ogunleye Slip Out of World Athletics Top 100

Rhasidat Adeleke and Yemisi Ogunleye, two Nigeria-born athletes who began 2025 inside the women’s overall top 100 rankings, slipped out of the elite list after indifferent seasons.

Adeleke, ranked 51st at the start of the year, and Ogunleye, ranked 50th, both fell outside the top 100 in the year-end standings released by World Athletics.

Adeleke had raised expectations of a spectacular campaign following her exploits in 2024. She reached the Olympic final in Paris, finishing fourth, won the EBS Herculis Diamond League meeting in Monaco, and set a new Irish 400m record of 49.07 seconds.

But her 2025 season did not unfold as planned. She withdrew from the World Championships in Tokyo and managed a season’s best of 50.42 seconds at the Bislett Games in Oslo in June. Although she ranked 15th in the 400m event, the 23-year-old slipped to 142nd in the overall women’s standings.

Ogunleye’s trajectory mirrored Adeleke’s decline. The German-Nigerian shot putter, who had stunned the world by winning Olympic gold in 2024, just a few months after winning silver at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, began 2025 ranked second in her event.

However, she struggled to replicate her previous form. She surpassed the 20m mark only once all year, with a 20.27m throw at the German Indoor Championships in Dortmund.

Outdoors, she failed to reach that distance, managing 19.65m in qualifying at the Tokyo World Championships before finishing sixth in the final with 19.33m. She ended the year ranked fifth in the shot put but dropped to 177th in the overall women’s rankings.

By contrast, only two Nigerians managed to stay inside the women’s overall top 100 at the close of 2025. Nigeria-born Bahraini sprinter Salwa Eid Naser and bonafide Nigerian sprint hurdler Tobi Amusan carried the nation’s flag among the world’s elite.