Though it was another disappointing outing for Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare-Ighoteguonor at the Oslo leg of the IAAF Diamond League held on Thursday as the sprint queen could only manage a seventh-place finish in the Long Jump event.But the 28-year-old Nigerian surprisingly made the headline as the long-jumper suffered a hair-piece malfunction with her hair-wig flew off during the jump.
The wig literally makes more distance jump than the athlete as it fell meters from the athlete landing point. But the athlete who appeared not to have any choice than to picked it up and redress it back on her head got caught by the spectators and the media including the officials who were busy looking at her with neither laughter nor strong face.
What was apparent was that the Olympic and World Championships silver medalist wasn’t quite at her best after that, with her leap of 6.48m, there was very little to cheer for Okagbare who has been quite shaky in her performances in the run to the IAAF World Championships, where she proudly has two medals to her name.
Okagbare will need another try having failed to hit the 6.75m qualification standard in the long jump set for August’s 17th IAAF World Championships scheduled for London.
For the Oslo meeting, the reigning World and Olympic champion Tianna Bartoleta proved her mettle as she won the event with her 6.79m fifth round effort, while Russian athlete Klishina Darya (6.75) who competed as an Authorised Neutral Athlete and Germany’s Rath Claudia (6.63m) came second and third respectively.
While Okagbare continues in her bid to secure a ticket for the Long Jump event, she is already in for the 100m and 200m events.
Running a time of 11.16 seconds in Hengelo, Holland early this week, Okagabre met and surpassed the 11.26 qualification standard for the 100m event while her 22.87 seconds personal season’s best in the 200m was achieved back in April is also more than enough as the standard for the event is 23.10secs
