Falilat Ogunkoya’s bronze medal at the Olympics inspired her Nigerian teammates to their best performance ever, and now she’s aiming even higher
ATHLETICS:Julian Drew
WHEN Falilat Ogunkoya, in South Africa at the moment for the Engen Grand Prix series, returned home last year to Lagos with the most successful Nigerian team in Olympic history she was fted just as much as long jump gold medallist Chioma Ajunwa and the victorious soccer team.
The Nigerian media dubbed her bronze medal in the 400m as “the golden bronze” because she was the one who broke the drought and opened the flood gates, becoming the first Nigerian athlete ever to win an individual medal and the first Nigerian woman as well.
By the end of the Games she had also become the first African woman to win two medals at the Games with her silver in the 4x400m relay – although here in South Africa Penny Heyns might dispute the Nigerian definition of an African woman!
Ogunkoya was a national hero and she was rewarded with a house from her state governor, land by the ocean from the governor of Lagos and money from the Abacha regime. “When I won that bronze it made everybody in the Nigerian team believe they could win,” says Ogunkoya.
In fact it gave her childhood friend, Mary Onyali, the motivation to go and win one of her own. “Mary told me that when she saw me win the bronze she thought to herself, `Woah, I started out with Fali. She’s just won the bronze. Damn, I’m going to get one of my own.’ That meant a lot to me because we’ve been running together since 1984 and we went to the world junior championships together in 1986.”
Before Atlanta she didn’t feature in many people’s medal predictions despite showing all the right signs. The reason for her relative anonymity was that she had only been competing for two years since a self- imposed five-year lay off and she had not yet made a name for herself.
Ogunkoya exploded on to the world stage when she won the 200m at the 1986 world junior championships in Athens as an 18- year-old. That earned her a scholarship in America at Mississippi State University where she progressed under coach Bob Kitchens, winning two sprint silvers at the 1987 All Africa Games as well as gold in both the relays and reaching the quarter finals of the 1988 Olympics.
In 1989 Kitchens decided to try her out in the 400m and in her first race in the South East Conference meet she broke the African record with a time of 51.65, lowering it twice more to 51.22 before the end of the season and winning bronze at the 1989 World Cup.
But although her future looked bright as a 400m runner she didn’t have to don shades to take away the glare. There were storm clouds aplenty gathering in her sport and in May 1990 at the age of 22 she threw in the towel. “After my Conference meet in 1990 that was it. I just stopped. I got tired of everybody using drugs,” says Ogunkoya.
It was a tough call to make for such a talented athlete but as a strict Muslim who doesn’t even drink, the blatant abuse going on around her became too much. “Everybody was doing it and even back home in Nigeria people were talking about this one and that one using drugs.
“Then in 1992 a bunch of people got caught and people asked me how do I feel about it and I said I don’t feel anything because I’ve already stopped running,” says Ogunkoya. Two of those caught in the lead- up to the Barcelona Olympics were Chioma Ajunwa and Charity Opara who both won medals in Atlanta after serving four-year suspensions.
In 1992 after finishing her studies Ogunkoya decided to have a baby and after her son was born in 1993 she started to jog to get fit and lose weight. In 1994 she moved to Albuquerque with her husband Tony Osheku – an 800m runner who holds the Nigerian mile record – and it was then that he started to pester her into making a comeback.
“Tony talked me into coming back because he thought I could be a very good quarter- miler. He knew I broke the African record after doing it for only one year and he believed I could be better,” says Ogunkoya.
After a five-year break, a return to the top flight was no stroll in the park. “Hell it was painful. It was like somebody beat me up with a baseball bat but he was right there encouraging me and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have made it. It is not easy coming back after a long lay-off,” says Ogunkoya.
She managed a couple of runs in Europe in 1994 but never went below 53 seconds and went back to Albuquerque to put in a hard winter in preparation for the 1995 world championships.
“I was hungry and I told myself I’ve got nothing to lose. I started doing long runs of around 45 minutes on mountain trails with Tony and that gave me a lot of strength. When I went to Houston in March and ran a 51 I knew I was back and after reaching the final at the world championships (she was sixth) I knew 1996 would be a good year for me after all I’d been through,” says Ogunkoya.
She was right. Three races under 50 seconds in the lead-up to Atlanta convinced her she had a shot at a medal and it was those runs in the forests of New Mexico that took her to that historic bronze medal in a new African record of 49.10. “I didn’t have a good start but I came through very fast in the last 150m and that was because of my strength,” she says.
Ogunkoya, along with Australia’s 400m silver medallist Cathy Freeman and local star Adri de Jongh who is aiming for her first sub-50 seconds run, is part of the most exciting field for any of the track events in the series.
And although she has not set the South African tracks on fire Ogunkoya is very happy with her form so far. “I only started training in January and I had one indoor race in Tokyo before racing in South Africa. I’m really pleased with where I am right now because my focus is on Athens and I must be in shape by June so that I’m ready for the Nigerian trials.”
With four world-class quarter-milers in Nigeria it will not be a formality for Ogunkoya to make the Nigerian team but with the invincible French gold medallist Marie- Jose Perec to aim for she has bigger challenges ahead.
“Nobody is out of reach. Not even Perec. You just have to work harder and programme your head right. Atlanta made me realise I can go further in athletics and I certainly aim to improve this year.”