Nigeria’s Mary Onyali bid farewell to international athletics on Wednesday with a gold medal in the 200m in front of an adoring home crowd at the All-Africa Games.
Highlighting a day of Nigerian domination, the 35-year-old team captain collected her third gold after earlier winning the 100m and anchoring the winning 4x100m relay. Her final victory helped Nigeria climb to the top of the medals table with a commanding six golds in athletics.
Onyali’s victory in 23,09 seconds capped an illustrious career that has included two Olympic bronze medals, in the 200m in 1996 and the 4x100m relay in 1992, and seven golds in the All-Africa Games since 1987.
Nigeria pulled off a medals sweep in the women’s 100m hurdles, won by Angela Atede in 13,01. That was followed with a second Nigerian sweep of the top three spots in the women’s long jump, won by Esther Aghatise, who jumped a personal best 6,58m to edge out countrywomen Grace Umelo and Chinedu Odozor.
The golden night for the hosts extended to the men’s 200m, which was won by Nigeria’s Uchenna Emedolu, who edged out Namibian legend Frank Fredericks with a time of 20,42 seconds.
Other Nigerian victors included Grace Ebor, who won the women’s 800m in 2:02,04, and the Nigerian women’s 4x400m relay team.
The victories launched Nigeria into first place in the medals table, above previous leader South Africa, who added two golds of their own.
Gerhardus Pienaar won the men’s javelin with a throw of 76,95m and Burger Lambrechts had a season-best 18,87m to win gold in the men’s shot put.
In perhaps the day’s most stunning performance, Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele won the men’s 5 000m in a Games record 13:26,16. In the final 1 000m, he ran a staggering 2:29,62 to overcome countryman Hailu Mekonnen and John Kibowen of Kenya.
In the men’s soccer bronze-medal match on Wednesday, Ghana beat Zambia 4-1 in a penalty shootout after a 2-2 draw.
After falling behind 1-0, Zambia took the lead on goals by Sipho Mumbi and Collins Mbesuma. But just as the Zambian fans were starting to celebrate, Ghana’s Shaibu Yakubu scored 94 seconds into injury time to level the match.
Good goalkeeping by Ghanaian Isaac Amoako kept the Zambians to one goal in penalty kicks while Ghana scored four to win the bronze.
In other soccer action, the women’s bronze was awarded to Cameroon after Rigoberte Mbah scored the lone goal of the match in the 72nd minute to beat Mali 1-0. — Sapa-AP