Seun Ogunkoya: National Sports Festival Launched Me To Stardom

Former Nigeria 100m record holder, Seun Ogunkoya says the National Sports Festival launched him into national and international reckoning.

Ogunkoya served a notice of a star in the making with his impressive 10.15 run in one of the opening heats of the blue ribband event at the National Sports Festival in

Makurdi, Benue state in 1996.

He followed it up with a place at the podium as the 100m champion, beating Tony Ogbeta who earlier set a new 10.13 Festival record to the gold medal.

Like a gold fish, there was no hiding place again for the then 19 year old Ogunkoya.

Barely two months later, he proved his performance in Makurdi was not by happenstance as he won the 100m gold at the African senior athletics championships in Yaounde,

Cameroon.

He followed up with a silver medal at the World Junior (now World U20) Championships in Sydney, Australia behind compatriot, Francis Obikwelu.

‘I was a relative unknown especially to the watching public until the Sports Festival in Makurdi where I ran 10.15 in the 100m and 20.72 in the 200m on my way to

successfully completing a sprint double,’ recalled Ogunkoya who would rise to become the fastest man in Nigeria for eight years.

‘The sprint double feat I achieved in Makurdi gave me the confidence to believe I can challenge the world.’

Ogunkoya ran his first sub 10 seconds in the event the following year when he ran 9.97 in Formia, Italy.

He thus became the fourth Nigerian to do so after Olapade Adeniken, Davidson Ezinwa and Daniel Effiong.

It was however in 1998 that he blossomed into a truly world class sprinter. He shocked the whole world in Zurich at the Weltklasse Golden League meeting where he ran

9.96 to beat the then undisputable African king of sprint events, Frankie Fredericks of Namibia who came third (10.04) with Obadele Thompson second in 10.03.

The two other Nigerians in the event, Francis Obikwelu(10.08) and Osmomd Ezinwa (10.13) came in fourth and sixth respectively.

Ogunkoya proved to Fredericks and a still shocked athletic world that his giant killing effort in Zurich was no fluke when he outran the Namibian again, this time at

the African Senior Athletics Championships in Dakar, Senegal barely a forthnight later.

The Nigerian exploded out of the blocks but Fredericks, who was just a fraction less effective at the start, came back on the powerful Ogunkoya but the 21 year old

reigning Nigeria 100m king pulled away in the last metres to clock 9.94 against the Namibian’s 9.97.

Ogunkoya’s time, a new personal best equalled the 9.94 national record Davidson Ezinwa set four years earlier in Linz, Austria.

The reigning, two-time African 100m king would later break the record he shared with Davidson by shaving 200th of a second off the mark, running 9.92 to come second

behind Obadele Thompson of the Barbados in the final at the IAAF (now World Athletics) World Cup (now Continental Cup) in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 1998.

Ogunkoya believes the National Sports Festival platform is one that produces and nurtures athletes and makes them realise their potential.

‘I don’t know what I would have achieved if I didn’t participate in the National Sports Festival,’ he said and appealed to the Sports Ministry to make the event one

athletes in all sports will truly be looking forward to.

Aside Ogunkoya, such great stars as Mary Onyali and Falilat Ogunkoya launched their careers as youngsters at the Kwara 1985 National Sports Festival before making the

podium a year later at the inaugural edition of the World Junior championships in Athens, Greece.

Onyali came second behind compatriot, Ogunkoya in the final of the 200m after she was disqualified in the 100m won by Tina Iheagwan.