Okagbare was one of Team Nigeria’s medal’s hopeful at the Rio Olympics, but she could not even make it to the final in both the 100m and 200m events. She was part of the country’s 4x100m relay team that qualified for the final, but placed last.
On Thursday night in Lausanne, Okagbare dumped the sprints for long jump, but her indifferent season went from bad to worse, after the seven-time Nigeria 100m queen could only managed a ‘school girl’ leap of 6.11m.
Okagbare had only two legal jumps in Lausanne with her opening jump of 6.11m placing her last (sixth) in the final classification after the duo of Jones Akela of Barbados and Canada’s Nettey Christable failed to show up. The Nigerian fouled her second attempt before jumping a mind boggling 5.95m to end her participation in the event on the night. The Sapele-born sprinter is ranked second behind Ese Brume (6.83m) in the Nigerian 2016 long jump top list.
However, for her tame effort on Thursday night, Okagbare earned $2,000 and one point to bring her total haul in the event to four from two meetings (Prefontaine in Eugene, USA and Athletissima in Lausanne, Switzerland).
Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic, who won the event with 6.83m still tops the Diamond Race with 46 points after garnering all maximum (10) points in Lausanne followed by world leader (7.31m) in the event, USA’s Britney Reese who was absent in Lausanne and the Canada’s Nettey with 16 and 15 points respectively. Reigning world and Olympic champion, Tianna Bartoletta of the USA finished fifth on Thursday to increase her points haul to 13 and is fourth in the ranking.
Meanwhile Okagbare will hope for a better outing today at the Meeting de Paris, the twelfth stage of the IAAF Diamond League at the Stade de France in Paris, France. The reigning Commonwealth Games double sprint champion will be competing in the long jump event and will not only wish to avoid the embarrassing display in Lausanne, but also an equally disappointing performance she put up six years ago in her first visit to the French capital where her third round leap of 6.44m was her only legal leap of the evening after fouling the first two and she ended up in ninth place.
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